The purpose of this website is to inform and help engage residents of the Lakota School District regarding issues of concern to the well-being of the children in Lakota. ProtectLakotaKids.com was created in September 2022 when allegations regarding Superintendent Matthew Miller were made public by a Butler County Sheriff investigation. Since then, the school board failed to take appropriate action, hid information, tried to silence the voices of concerned residents and on November 2, absolved the superintendent of wrongdoing, when in reality, investigations cleared him of “criminal” activity at the present time, not moral failure. As a licensed educator in Ohio, Mr. Miller is bound to the code of conduct outlined in the Licensure Code of Professional Conduct for Ohio Educators.
The community needs to hold the Board accountable, and to do so, they need to be informed. Toward that end, this website provides publicly available information as well as information obtained through public records requests. It will be updated as more information becomes available.
It was discovered that allegations regarding Matthew Miller date back to 2019/2020, but the Board at the time, including current board members Lynda O’Connor, Julie Schaffer and Kelley Casper, failed to address the situation. Further, they supported a new contract with Mr. Miller two years before the expiration of his established contract, failed to include a morality clause and increased his salary. A pattern of dishonesty, lack of transparency and inadequate ethical and moral standards continues to be displayed by the Lakota Board of Education. This pattern serves “the system”, not the children, parents or community.
The links below provide local and state standards of behavior and evidence of failure to live by those standards. Again, the purpose of sharing this information is so that the public can be informed and take appropriate action to restore morality and ethics in the Lakota School District, while providing a safe and vibrant learning environment for Lakota children.