How did they come up with 'Sandy Slope' for Appleton's new school? Here's the history

GRAND CHUTE – In 1942, Sandy Slope School started its new school year a little late because the new seats and toilets hadn’t arrived.

“We had school on October 10 and 17 to make up some days,” wrote Mildred Kauth, a sixth-grader at the time.

Details like these are hard to come by for the rural schoolhouse which closed almost 80 years ago.

If you want to learn about the history of Sandy Slope School, you can’t go to the history museum, the public library or even the town of Grand Chute offices.

You need to go to The Petersen Farm on Ballard Road.

Mark and Steve Petersen said their father, Lawrence, attended Sandy Slope as a child. He died in 2019, but the brothers have artifacts of their father’s alma mater scattered throughout the family farm; like a picture of him and his classmates standing in front of the school with a 48-star flag.

Lawrence told his son stories over the years, but the details of Sandy Slope live on through two copies of a student-written newsletter titled “Sandy Slope School News.”

The copies of Sandy Slope News the Petersens have are extraordinary; not only for their relatively pristine condition despite being published around 70 years ago, but simply because they exist.

Just two issues of the newsletter have more details about the school than any state, county or town officials contacted for this story. Outside of old newspaper clippings, the newsletters were among the few documents The Post-Crescent found about the school.

The older of the two newsletters mentioned the upcoming 1940 primary election. Lawrence was in fifth grade then.

As an eighth grader, Lawrence wrote a report on corn for the newsletter. He said the students learned about a myriad of ways to use corn and listed 26 of them — from paste on postage stamps to candy.

Another student, Robert Behle, wrote about the school buying $2.90 worth of defense stamps that September.

“I hope that we can buy more stamps so that the war will be over soon,” the sixth-grader wrote.

The Appleton school board voted Monday on naming its new elementary school Sandy Slope. When the district purchased the land from the Van Handel family, there was a clause written into the purchase agreement requesting that any future elementary schools constructed on the site be named Sandy Slope. 

One of the sellers, Richard Van Handel, attended Sandy Slope, which is why he put that item in the purchase agreement, according to information provided by the district. The Sandy Slope newsletters indicate other Van Handels attended the school, too.

At a previous board meeting, Superintendent Greg Hartjes said community members have told him they like the historical significance of the name for the new school.

Here’s what we do and don’t know about the original Sandy Slope School.

When did Sandy Slope open?

One of the other few documents found was a 1926 edition of The Wisconsin Journal of Education. It says Sandy Slope was part of District 6 in Grand Chute and was dedicated on Feb. 10.

“Having worn out two or three school houses since pioneer days, they were now dedicating a new one to the youth of their district,” the article read.

It sat along the “old mail trail” that ran from Green Bay to Stevens Point and was traveled by Jean Nicolet and fur traders as far back as the 1600s.

Miss Mae Strelke, the teacher, accepted the key to the new building.

Where was it located and is it still standing?

The schoolhouse was located at the corner of Ballard Road and Edgewood Drive, next to Appleton North High School.

It is still standing, but has since been converted into a residential property. The current owners, Mike and Karen Kraus, bought the home in 1982.

Much of the history lives on through local families, but few records exist

For this article, The Post-Crescent reached out to more than half a dozen sources for information about the former school. Most of them — including the state Department of Public Instruction, Appleton Public Library and the History Museum at the Castle — had little to no records of the school.

The Appleton Historical Society had a few maps which showed the school, but nothing else. Lawrence University staff found the Wisconsin Journal of Education article.

The property is in the town of Grand Chute; however, the town only has documents dating back to September 1984 — roughly four decades after the school is believed to have closed because of low enrollment — said Chief Building Inspector Cary Nate.

“Grand Chute would not have had a building inspector at the time Sandy Slope School was operating,” Nate said.

A few details of the inside of the building were found in the Petersens’ newsletters, though.

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New ceiling, walls, wash bowl and septic tank toilets

In the same newsletter as his corn report, Lawrence also wrote about the new toilets — an upgrade from chemical toilets to septic tanks. When school started, the toilets were not yet installed, he wrote. The school board borrowed some before the new ones were installed, but those were damaged one night.

“We are so happy that we have so many nice things in school that we would like to have everybody help us to keep the things we have in good condition,” Lawrence wrote.

The floor of the new toilets were a light linoleum, he added.

That year, new walls and a new ceiling were also installed. The ceiling was in squares with gold stripes, and the walls were tan with gold stripes running down, wrote Richard Van Handel, then a fifth-grader.

Rosemary Van Handel wrote about the new, white wash bowl the school got. The water from it ran into the toilet, she explained.

A few years earlier, a student wrote about 12 pictures of birds, including a woodpecker, robin and blue jay, which lined the front of the room.

Lessons on the 1940 primary election, airplanes and food from the past

The newsletters offer snippets of what students learned at Sandy Slope.

The students wrote about their lessons on the 1940 primary election. They learned the Republicans held their convention in Philadelphia, while the Democrats held theirs in Chicago.

“Roosevelt, Dewey, Garner and Vandenberg are running for president,” Harold Boers, an eighth-grader, wrote.

There was a language unit on airplanes. The students made a list of things they’d like to know about airplanes and tried to find the answers, wrote Evelyn Bender, a fifth-grader.

Ms. Parsons read Flight 17 to the students as part of the unit. Lila Woldt wrote that the book taught her that “a terminal is a place where many airplanes come together.”

Other new library books that year included “Shaggy the Horse from Wyoming” and “Lucretic Ann on the Oregon Trail.”

Students also listened to a radio program called "Food from the past," and drew examples such as fields of corn planted with beans and milkweed made into salad on 2-inch squares of paper, wrote Donald Van Handel.

Student behavior was monitored with a deportment chart

Thanks to the writing of sixth-grade Elaine Plamann, we know there was a “deportment chart” to keep track of student behavior.

As she described it, each student started with 100, and a point was taken away if they disturbed anyone.

“Some of us still have marks near 100,” she wrote.

Remnants of the old school can still be seen in the basement of the house

Although there have been additions and renovations over the years, the house has relics of its past life, Mike Kraus said. You just need to know what to look for.

At one point, he said, Sandy Slope was a two-room school. A wall divided the building, and when you walked in, you chose between the rooms to your left or right.

The dividing wall was taken down on the first floor, but it still stands in the basement. That's also where you can see where the tanks for the indoor outhouses used to sit, he said.

Do you know someone who went to Sandy Slope or have other historical information on the school? Reach AnnMarie Hilton at ahilton@gannett.com or 920-370-8045. Follow her on Twitter at @hilton_annmarie.

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This article originally appeared on Appleton Post-Crescent: Grand Chute: History of Sandy Slope School remains largely unknown