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About Kaukauna Area School District

Welcome to Kaukauna Area School District (KASD). The KASD is an excellent school system which is located on the northeast side of Appleton. The system includes early childhood through 12th grade. We have approximately 4,100 students and approximately 500 staff members. If you have questions or need information on the district, please call (920)766-6100.

Mary Weber
Superintendent of KASD
Phone: (920)766-6100
weberm@kaukauna.k12.wi.us

Kelli Antoine
Director of Curriculum/Instruction
Phone: (920)766-6100
antoinek@kaukauna.k12.wi.us

Randy Hughes
Director of Special Education
Phone: (920)766-6100
hughesr@kaukauna.k12.wi.us

Bob Schafer
Business Manager
Phone: (920)766-6100
schaferr@kaukauna.k12.wi.us

Melissa Thiel Collar
Director of Legal Services and Human Resources
Phone: (920)766-6100
thielcollarm@kaukauna.k12.wi.us

 

Vision Statement

The Kaukauna Area School District will educate students to be effective life-long learners who can successfully meet the challenges of their lives and be positive contributors to society.

 

Mission Statement

The Kaukauna Area School District, in partnership with our community, will provide a rigorous and relevant curriculum through best instructional practices which emphasize student achievement and accountability, delivered in a safe and caring environment.

Guiding Principles

Kaukauna Area School District staff will:

• Use assessment to drive curricular and instructional decisions.
• Create a supportive, respectful and encouraging environment for student growth and learning.
• Use instructional practices proven successful based on research and field experience.
• Hold students accountable for their learning and behavior.
• Implement a collaborative approach to teaching and learning.
• Be positive role models who reflect the characteristics of our vision, mission and guiding principles.
• Teach so all students can learn and succeed.
• Be accountable for student learning.
• Deliver the district’s approved curriculum.

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About Kaukauna

Kaukauna is one of the oldest communities in the State of Wisconsin. Reportedly, the first white explorer to see Kaukauna was Jean Nicolet, who pushed his birch bark canoe up the Fox River from Green Bay in 1634. He was hoping to find a water passage to the Orient when he set foot on land that is now Kaukauna. Nicolet made allies with the Winnebago Indians that he found in the region, and returned to Canada. Many trappers, hunters, missionaries, and merchants soon followed with additional expeditions to the new territory.

In 1760, the first trading post was established by Pierre Grignon. Dominique Ducharme was the first permanent white settler and built a substantial log house in 1790 in Cacalin (Kaukauna) and began trading with the Menomini and Chippewa Indians. At that time 1,500 Indians lived in a village at Kaukauna.

Historically, the north side of the City was the first to be settled, with Dominique Ducharme's land deed of 1793 encompassing the present north side commercial district and the residential areas to the north and east of it. The Ducharme deed was Wisconsin's first recorded deed in which he obtained several hundred acres of land for the initial payment of two barrels of rum. Additional portions of rum were given the Indians in 1797, 1798, and 1799.

In 1794, Paul Ducharme arrived in Kaukauna to help his brother Dominique with the fur trade. In 1803, he bought out the business, as Dominique returned to Montreal at the death of their father. Paul became heavily indebted to Judge John Lawe of Green Bay for Indian supplies and deeded his property to Lawe. Paul Ducharme then moved to Green Bay where he died at 90 years of age.

In 1818, Augustin Grignon moved from Green Bay to take up residence in Kaukauna on a government grant of 1,000 acres of land on the lower rapids. On this land the Ducharme cabin had stood and Grignon improved the original structure. On the Grignon property, but closer to the river, Augustin's son Charles built a "Mansion in the Woods" In 1837. The Charles A. Grignon Home, listed on the National Register of Historic Places and owned by the Outagamie County Historical Society, Inc. is the earliest remaining home in Outagamie County.

A settlement known as Statesburg began on the south side of what is now Kaukauna, an area also claimed by the Menomini during the period of 1822-1832. The Stockbridge tribe, part of the great Mohawk nation of the Iroquois, had fought on the side of the Americans in the Revolutionary War, and were removed from the steamroller of Yankee settlement in Massachusetts and New York with the reward of western land to be held with the native American groups already in the area. An 1832 map of the Kaukauna area from the State Historical Society of Wisconsin Collections bears in its legend:

"... The Stockbridge Indians commenced the settlement of the Grand Kaccalin [Grand Kaccalin means "big rapids"], in the month of November, 1822.... At a General Council held by the Males of the Stockbridge and Munsee Tribes, Jan'y 1826: 'resolved that as a Mark of our Grateful Acknowledgement for the aid afforded the New York Indians in the purchase of lands in this Country by the Government of the United States that, that portion whereon the Stockbridge and Munsee Tribes are located, i.e., on the South East side of For River 8 between Grand Kaccalin and Winnebago Lake be named STATESBURGH...'"

Two Stockbridge veterans who fought against the British were buried in Kaukauna: Captain Hendrick Aupaumut, who had received his commission from Gen. George Washington, and Jacob Konkapot, grandson of a great Stockbridge Chief. The 1832 Statesburg map shows the Stockbridge burial ground on what would become the John Brill farm on Buchanan Road.

A Christian church had been organized among the Stockbridge in 1818. About 1823, an Episcopal mission under the Rev. Mr. Cadle established a log schoolhouse and church in South Kaukauna. The mission was expanded by the Presbyterian Rev. Jesse Miner in 1828, and in that year Electa Quinney, an educated Stockbridge woman, began teaching the first free school in Wisconsin. The 1832 Statesburg map locates the Mission House in downtown Kaukauna, south side, in the site of the later railroad yards, but the schoolhouse is shown opposite the burial ground on the old Brill farm.

In 1830, Miner's successor, the Rev. Cutting Marsh, M.D., found that the Stockbridge settlement stretched along the south bank of the Fox for four or five miles and extended for almost two miles into the interior. The Stockbridge had adopted American customs, lived in log cabins, raised corn, wheat, and livestock on large farms. The Stateburg Indian settlement numbered 225 people, of whom 39 were church members.

Unfortunately, a new series of American treaties, which resulted in cessions from the Menomini and Winnebago began in 1831, and the Stockbridge could not retain clear title to their land. In 1832, they moved to settlements in Calumet County which came to be known as Stockbridge and Brothertown.

The departure of the Stockbridge from Statesburg reduced substantially the population of the Kaukauna area. The Grignons were left in the wilderness in the company of a small group of French farmers. Two factors led to immediate growth: the 1838 Treaty of the Cedars opened the Fox Valley to settlement through U.S. territorial land offices, and George W. Laws arrived to claim the land the Ducharmes had signed over to his father.

George W. Lawe made the first plat on the north side of town in 1850. The plat of about 17 blocks preserved the "diagonal" French-oriented street system which still prevails on the near north and south sides of Kaukauna.

A small north side business district developed during canal building activities in the 1850s, but the canal boom was brief and this business district faltered. The Chicago and Northwestern Railroad's north side line encouraged local industry such as flour milling and lumber processing in the 1880s and '709, but before 1880, the north side remained a modest settlement and the south side had reverted to scattered farms. The second railroad boom of the 1880s brought Irish and German workers who created the south side Village of Ledyard. In 1881, the Milwaukee Lake Shore and Western Railroad relocated its district office from Manitowoc to Kaukauna's south side. First Street was vacated and the railroad yards sprang up in "Little Manitowoc" approximately where the municipal building is today. The south central area was developed with company housing for the railroad workers and became known as "Yankee Hill" with about 200 Yankee families living there in the late 1800s.

In 1885, the Village of Ledyard joined with the north side to form the City of Kaukauna. The 1880s railroad developments coincided with the creation of new water power canals to supply Kaukauna industry. The men who built the railroads and power canals stayed to create the paper industry which is so important to Kaukauna today. Five municipal hydroelectric generating plants gave Kaukauna its nickname, the "Electric City."