Neighborhood group presents check to help AASD with debt

Northside Neighbor2Neighbor prides itself on non-partisanship. 

The nascent community action group believes the values of helping others in need are shared values and are neither Democratic or Republican. 

So when group member Kathy Kraus handed a check for $6,000 that the group had raised to help with school lunch debt relief to District Lead Accountant Diane Wittman and Appleton Area School District Superintendent Greg Hartjes on Wednesday afternoon, there was no politics, only gratitude.

But while that money was going to help families in need who don’t quite qualify for free school lunch, it was also helping to keep the school district from falling further into debt, debt that school district must pay from a general fund that is already running a large deficit. Currently the district is $70,000 in the hole with lunch debt. 

Northside Neighbor2Neighbor heard about that and took action, holding a rummage sale in early September and hauling in $6,000. All told, according to Wittman, more than $10,000 has poured in after one anonymous donor gave $4,000. Additionally, Northside Neighbor2Neighbor has canisters at various retail outlets around town and hopes to collect even more for the cause.

“Never did we dream we’d raise so much money from a rummage sale,” said Kathy Kraus as she presented the check at the district offices. “And when people found out that it was for the school lunch program they really donated generously. And we know that public schools have been starved for funds for many, many years and we also know that kids need food to learn.”

Schools that meet a certain threshold of need qualify for Community Eligibility Provision, which gives all kids at that school free lunches. At the schools that don’t qualify for CEP, students whose family income is below a certain level also receive free lunches. Where the debt occurs is for students whose families make just over the maximum but still struggle to pay for lunches, which cost about $15 a week. When those families can’t pay, AASD is on the hook for it and that is how the debt has piled up.

Hartjes said nutrition is one of the essential factors that go into educating students. Hungry students, he said, struggle to learn. 

“Our role obviously is to educate kids,” he said in thanking Kraus and her organization. “So we're funded to teach reading and writing and math and so on, but we know that what also goes into that is students' ability to learn, and that is dependent on a lot of other factors, and so it's all those other factors that we don't necessarily have the funding to support. So we rely on community members like yourself.”

The lunch debt AASD pays comes out of its general fund and that is where politics – or policy anyway – becomes a factor. With budgets over the past 15 years not offering public schools enough funding to keep up even with inflation, districts all over the state have fallen into holes and have been forced to go to referendums to raise money. Appleton passed one in 2022 but with a current $13 million deficit another referendum is possible in 2026.

“Over the last 32 years the revenue limits that were put in place have really restricted spending on public education and certainly in the Appleton Area School District,” Hartjes said. “If we were funded in the same way we were even in 2009, we'd have over 30 million more dollars this year to support students. So absolutely, the revenue limits have done what they were intended to do, which was to keep property taxes low.

“But they've then really burdened school districts in terms of meeting the needs of kids.”

Kraus said Northside Neighbor2Neighbor will have a table with donation canisters and QR codes at the Kimberly-Appleton North football game on Friday in Appleton, where the group hopes to raise even more money for school lunch debt relief.

“We can’t fix every problem,” said group member Sally Huntington. “But we can still look out for each other.”