Gillett Superintendent Nathan Hanson has hit the ground running, based on his report at his first school board meeting July 17.
“It’s been an exciting last couple weeks,” Hanson told the board. “There’s been a lot going on, a lot of things to work with and get on top of.”
Hanson spent the past three academic years as superintendent of the White Lake School District. The Gillett School Board approved his appointment at a special meeting Jan. 29 , effective July 1. He succeeds Wayne Johnson and Todd Carlson, who served as interim superintendents after the death of former superintendent Todd Hencsik in May 2022.
White Lake was Hanson’s first superintendent job after serving as director of personalized learning in the Shawano School District. He previously held various positions in Plymouth, Tomahawk, Merrill and Antigo.
Among the issues that kept Hanson busy:
• Hanson talked with representatives from Lamers Bus Lines about continued transportation of students in the 3-year-old kindergarten program.
“Last year, we had two 3K students that were allowed to ride the shuttle from Sunshine Day Care Center to school,” he said. “Lamers actually purchased two Star Seats because busing 3K students is an entirely different game from busing 4K students.”
Standards for seating and busing 3-year-old students are more stringent than those for older children, Hanson said.
“Lamers took that expense on their own and provided those Star Seats; they informed me that day care staff seated the children and got them buckled in,” he said. “Lamers said they are currently OK with continuing to do that setup, but we may be discussing costs if that setup were to expand and more kids were to start riding the shuttle.”
Lamers had serious concerns about the logistics of offering 3K busing to all students in the district, and the board’s buildings and grounds committee voted to allow only the Sunshine shuttle, for now, Hanson said.
• Hanson met with secondary principal Shawn Limberg about what the district might do to cover the costs of University of Wisconsin-Green Bay credit classes for students who can’t afford them, and Limberg suggested a meeting for parents of students interested in taking the college-level math classes.
“That way all parents are really adequately informed and understand what’s going on, that’s there’s an expense to this, that they’ve got a very narrow time frame to make a decision, which is all set by Green Bay,” Hanson said.
Grants are available from the state Department of Public Instruction to help students cover the cost, which is $440 or $110 per credit this year. Limberg said the deadline for applying the for the DPI grant was mid-November last year.
• Hanson heard from the Rev. Jonathan Carlson of Hillside Assembly about the former city policy of not holding activities at Orby Jones Sports Complex before noon Sundays. The school district recently took over operation of the ball fields from the city.
Board member Scott Buhrandt noted there was an issue earlier this summer when tournament games scheduled for midweek were postponed by several days of rain, and the tourney ended up running through a Sunday morning.
The conversation with the pastor was positive, Hanson said.
“He really wants to work with us on ways to use that entire area,” he said. “He said that when the church isn’t in use, we can use their parking lot as overflow, for example, if we had some process we could work out with them.”
Hanson said he plans to attend a Gillett/Suring Clergy Association meeting in August or September to talk about how the schools and churches might work together to serve students in their communities.
“I think we all have very similar missions and if we can collaborate or at least share information, I think it will be a positive thing for us,” he said.
• The new superintendent attended a meeting of the new Gillett Area Chamber of Commerce and came away with raffle tickets for the upcoming Homecoming Countdown event. He told the board the tickets are $10 and available in his office.
wbluhm@newmedia-wi.com
New superintendent has been busy
