In his 30th year with the Appleton Area School District, Greg Hartjes is its new leader. Here's where he wants to start.
APPLETON - When Greg Hartjes started his career in education, he saw himself dedicating 30-plus years to being a math teacher and basketball coach.
About a decade in, he decided he wanted a position that would help him influence the education of more students, so he became an assistant principal and then a principal. It wasn’t until a mentor called on him to come work as a district administrator that he started to see himself in charge of the whole thing one day.
That day came July 1 when Hartjes officially started his role as superintendent of the Appleton Area School District.
“I’m just so energized by this position,” he told The Post-Crescent in an interview at the end of his first week.
More: Appleton Area School District names district CFO Greg Hartjes next superintendent
More: Here's how much Appleton Area School District's next superintendent will make in his first year
Normally, the summer months are a great time for district staff and administrators to use their vacation time. But now Hartjes can't wait to get to the office each day.
Outside of physically moving into his new office space, he said he has spent much of his first few days reviewing data, something he anticipates doing every July.
He’s been with the district 30 years, so his knowledge of the district is already vast. But what he feels he needs to be doing in these early days is taking a step back to see what went well last year, what needs immediate improvement and anything else the numbers will tell him.
"The real key I feel in education is to make incremental change based on data and then making sure we’re analyzing that to say, 'Did this change do what we had hoped it would do?'" Hartjes said.
But he doesn’t want to overreact. Attendance data, for example, shows there were some issues last year, but Hartjes knows students were still having to spend time out of school, quarantining from the pandemic that colored much of the past few school years.
Improving student attendance is just one area Hartjes wants to devote his attention to early on. Overall, he said, he’s focused on students and their success, but intentionally improving literacy is fundamental for all students and is a priority for the coming year.
In a district the size of Appleton’s, Hartjes said, it’s nearly impossible to get to know all 15,000 students, 9,000 families and 2,000 staff members. But he wants all of them to have the chance to get to know him. This fall, he plans to do evening meetings at each school so community members can get to know him and what he values in education.
When asked what he values, Hartjes said it’s equity and supporting the whole student. Some students are going to have greater needs than others, and he wants the district to support students' individual needs. And while 30 years ago, the conversation would have been purely about academics, the district needs to be thinking also about a student’s social and emotional needs.
“I know we’ve met the needs of students for years, but our students are changing,” Hartjes said. “So can we be the same district for an Afghan refugee that we’ve been for a student whose family’s been in Appleton for 100 years?”
Coming off his tenure as the district's chief financial officer, Hartjes knows there are operational aspects of his role that will also need attention soon.
Two financial items at the top of that list are responsibly and efficiently spending the rest of the federal pandemic relief money and continuing to plan for the potential $130 million referendum.
If the school board approves going ahead with the referendum – it's expected to vote on the plan in late July or early August – Hartjes will have to communicate the district’s needs to the community and how the proposed projects would address those.
He said the potential referendum and past referendums are examples of how the community, the district staff and families all want the same thing for students: for them to be well-educated and successful.
"Let’s just figure out how to work together to help our kids, to help them succeed," he said. "That’s really what I love about this community."
Reach AnnMarie Hilton at ahilton@gannett.com or 920-370-8045. Follow her on Twitter at @hilton_annmarie.
This article originally appeared on Appleton Post-Crescent: New Appleton schools leader Greg Hartjes targets attendance, literacy
