At the Lakota school board meeting of October 10th, 2022, the board chose to shut down public comments so to avoid talking about the Matt Miller controversy in public. This is precisely why it’s important to know what the political affiliations are of your local school board members because when nonpartisan alignments are allowed, bad, liberal behavior can be hidden behind such politeness. And that is the ultimate tragedy of the Matt Miller situation at Lakota schools. Ironically, if we did not elect Darbi Boddy to the school board in 2021, and that she was attacked so quickly into her term with such viciousness, we likely wouldn’t know any of what we do of Matt Miller’s sex life. And as flawed and reckless as it has been, what has been the real quality of a very expensive superintendent? Looking back on it, it’s a real blessing that Darbi was attacked so harshly and that so many community members came to her defense. The ugliness that many of us have known was always behind Lakota schools, which actually are the cause of their runaway costs, has been revealed in the wake of the Matt Miller drama, and as bad as it has been, the district is much better off than it was in not knowing. But what was revealing when reading the police interview of Matt Miller’s ex-wife is that Lakota schools did know; they knew all along how bad their superintendent was behaving in public, and instead of solving the behavior, they decided, because they are primarily liberals, that Matt Miller’s lifestyle did not have an impact on his ability to do his job as a superintendent. And knowing that makes you wonder what kind of behavior they would find worthy of termination. 

Well, actually, we do know that same school board moved to get rid of the newcomer, Darbi Boddy, who was unashamedly conservative simply because she was a conservative. But in so trying to destroy her, they opened up this vast public anger that probed into the life of Matt Miller and found an ex-wife who felt very bad about her marriage to the superintendent, and that guilt let out many things that the public needed to know, which were already known behind the scenes, and now the school itself has significant problems. According to the public record of the ex-wife’s interview, the elements of their divorce leaked out in 2020. The school moved to get help from a reputation swat team to clean up the matter because Miller had used his office and tools of that office to maintain a dating profile that was embarrassing and consistent with what was revealed in the two police interviews, one with him and the other with his wife at the time. In Miller’s interview, he portrayed his ex-wife as crazy and had difficulty figuring out why all this information was coming out now, as opposed to 2019, when the divorce happened. Well, according to her, it took her a while to live alone and figure out what she had gone through for the last couple of decades while married to a guy who wanted her to have sex with other men, women, and couples at least 2 or 3 times a month. She felt she needed to appease him; otherwise, he would become angry. And the impact on her over all this was clearly daunting. After reading it, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. Until I got the public document for myself, I had only heard of her through the many documents, the text messages, and other material that filled a bulging folder with lots of bad sexual behavior.

Of course, in her report, there was a lot of information in the context of the most controversial aspect of the drama, the conversation of pillow talk regarding the drugging, molestation, and videotaping of three kids who attend Lakota schools. When he tells it, it sounds like a sexual fantasy that she had which he obliged in. When she told it, it sounded like a scheme to keep her from divorcing him by talking her into doing something outrageous so that he’d have a video of her doing it, and he could threaten her to stay with him now that their kids were grown. But that the discussion took place, there is clearly no doubt. His value for the relationship looks to have been easier for him to have sex with other males because of her than without her, which can be concluded by reading his Craigslist advertisements of her to unknown characters for such engagements. So, he wanted to keep a good thing going, and getting her to do something outrageous was a way to accomplish that task, which isn’t uncommon. That is at least the conclusion of her many friends who have stepped forward in defense of the ex-wife whom they have developed great sympathy for. Having dirt on people is a primary way to get others to do what might not be in their best interest. And ultimately, it’s also why so many people stay silent on these kinds of matters because they can’t afford to have a moral judgment. After all, they, too, have been compromised at some point in time. After reading both reports several times, I tend to believe her side of the story much more than his. She says this, and another event was what broke her and caused her to leave him without many resources for herself to live off of. She is the one who took all the pain to make a change, so she is much more invested in the correct answer than he is. And that certainly comes out in her version of the story. 

As salacious as all these details are, the worst part of the story has been what the Lakota school board knew and when they knew it. And to what rationalization they had about the matter when they knew they had an obligation to public transparency. By the time we came out of the Covid lockdowns and we elected new board members, replacing a few who clearly made bad decisions on the Matt Miller case, the volcano was destined to blow. Such an overtly sexual lifestyle could not be contained, and the liberals’ expectation was no different than their defense of Bill Clinton (it’s just about sex, he can still do his job.)  And just like that, the assumption was that the community would not or that their opinions would be accepted because they were too conservative and out of touch with the progressive Lakota school system. And that we were all supposed just to accept this level of bad behavior while paying an extraordinary amount of money for each house in the district to the school without any expectation of performance. Since Matt Miller came to the district in 2017, there has been a steady decline in the quality of education as measured by state sources, and now we know that for him, it was mainly a cosmetic role. His Ashley Madison and Craigslist dating accounts show quite a commitment to the kind of sex that conservatives find reprehensible and anti-family in the extreme. Yet the community members were supposed to bring their concerns about their own children to him for consideration. And that topics of transexual bathrooms were to be judged by him? That PRIDE flags in the halls were normal? When you see his lifestyle, it’s clear why they hated Darbi the moment she was elected. And why they were so threatened when she showed up at a couple of schools in April to record evidence of sexual grooming at Lakota schools, which everyone said wasn’t happening, including Matt Miller. But then again, he also said that he never thought about drugging, molesting, and videotaping three kids, except that one time. And in this case, as bad as it is, the cover-up is even worse than the initial act. The school board has known all along, and they covered it up for fear that people might learn about it. Can you imagine what else they have been covering up from us? Can we trust anything they say? I’d say no. 

Rich Hoffman