APPLETON, WI (WTAQ) – The new superintendent for the Appleton Area School District is a face many people in the district and the community will recognize.
Current Appleton Schools Chief Financial Officer Greg Hartjes will take over as superintendent on July 1st. While he’s spent the past five years have been in an office, Hartjes spent the first 25 years in Appleton as a teacher, coach, assistant principal, and principal.
“Appleton’s been my home for 30 years as I’ve worked in the district in many different roles,” Hartjes said. “When I moved into the chief financial officer role, my job is basically to make sure that students have the resources they need to learn, teachers had what they needed to teach, and principals had what they needed, but I was kind of behind the scenes, so I’m removed a little bit from teaching and learning.”
“Greg has extensive experience in the school district,” said Board of Education President Kay Eggert. “He has a track record of creating genuine, strong relationships. He is very connected in the community, and he cares deeply about the community.”
That community connection isn’t the only major factor in why Hartjes became the top candidate.
“The biggest factor in the end, is that he considers is what is best for students. He is so clearly focused on what is right for students…that, with the financial background, it’s really good combination,” Eggert told WTAQ News. “We serve the students obviously but we also serve the community as a whole so we need to be able to connect with folks that have children in school and folks that do not have children in school.”
Hartjes is excited for the opportunity to utilize his background in operations, but even more so, to work closely with teachers and principals once again.
“You have an opportunity to impact the lives of 150 students per day if you’re a high school teacher. When you become a principal, that role is larger and maybe you impact 1400-1500 students,” Hartjes told WTAQ News. “As the superintendent, you have the opportunity and really, obligation, to do everything you can to impact the lives of your 15,000 students. So that’s what I’m most excited about, is just really being able to directly impact the success of our students.”
Hartjes says a top priority is to put the divisiveness of the pandemic behind, and rally everyone around pushing education forward.
“Our community, our families, the district – we all want the same thing, right? We want success for our students because they’re our future,” Hartjes said. “We still are seeing students that had some challenges throughout the pandemic, so we have a lot of work to do with making up for that loss of learning that students experienced…[we have to] try to make up for it the interruption to learning that students had over the year and a half prior to this year. It’s been since almost 2 years to the day, March 13th of 2020, that our schools in the state closed and went virtual.”
The board of education is expected to officially approve his contract during their meeting next week.
