The Northridge Local School District is the proud home of the Vikings – the name of the mascot for the rural district in central Licking County – and the board of education starts each monthly meeting by reading the “Viking Values” the district says it upholds: “Trust, Leadership, Communication, Collaboration, Accountability, Integrity & Respect.”
Those words ring hollow with a growing number of constituents who are tired of board inaction on longstanding issues that have fostered distrust, a lack of communication and collaboration, and tension between leaders in the Northridge district office.
One of the nearly 50 people in attendance during the April 15 meeting – a school secretary who has been seeking pay parity with higher-paid district office secretaries since November – spoke briefly during a public comment period and urged the board “for remembering the Viking Values you put in place when you vote tonight.”
Perhaps board members heard her, because soon, the board went into executive session. After nearly two hours, the board emerged with a motion by board President Evelyn Vance. She proposed fixing an unusual management structure that, according to one former superintendent, has helped foster the dysfunctional environment for district leaders.
Vance proposed removing business duties from the treasurer and giving them to the incoming superintendent – duties that by board policy should belong to the superintendent but were given to Britt Lewis when he was hired in 2012 as treasurer and director of business services.
As business director, Lewis’s office oversees human resources, transportation, technology, and custodial and food services, in addition to financial matters of the district.
The board voted 5-0 to approve the motion and transfer those duties by Aug. 1 or when a new superintendent is hired, whichever comes first. Superintendent Kristine Michael, who had requested the transfer of those duties after she was hired in 2023, is retiring from the district in June and has taken a job in Washington state.
Superintendents in Ohio typically function as the chief executive officer responsible for academics and district operations, and the treasurer is responsible for financial matters.
Some critics have suggested that assigning business duties to Lewis was illegal. During Tuesday’s meeting, he read from a section of the Ohio Revised Code – 3319.031 – that he says gave the board legal authority to do that.
“There’s been a lot of noise around that, and I wanted to get that cleared up,” Lewis said. “We have not been operating illegally. We have been operating different from our policies, but we have not been operating illegally.”
But shifting some of the traditional duties of the superintendent to the treasurer ended up putting Lewis in a position for potential conflicts of interest because he and his office, among other things, are responsible for his wife’s position as the district’s food-service director, and her department.
Addressing the management structural issues took on new urgency in the wake of an annual state audit of the 1,200-student district that came with a letter citing a “noncompliance finding.” The finding is that, by virtue of the treasurer being assigned duties for which the superintendent is responsible, the treasurer is facing an ethics complaint.
Ohio Auditor Keith Faber sent a letter dated March 5 to district officials saying that his office would refer to the Ohio Ethics Commission a concern about Lewis being involved in the hiring of his wife, Carley Lewis, as the food service director – and that Mrs. Lewis reports to the assistant treasurer.
Northridge-Local-School-District-management-letter-March-5-2025Mr. Lewis said during the April 15 board meeting that the district is in fine shape financially and that “it was a clean audit – the 12th in a row,” and he insisted that “there were no noncompliance findings” – after which board member Kate Creager and a district resident, speaking during a public comment period – noted that the caption on the state auditor’s letter says, “Noncompliance Finding.”
Mr. Lewis said during the meeting that he had faced ethics complaints in the past because of his relationship with the food-service director. He also said he believes there is no ethics investigation underway currently, because, he said, no one from the Ohio Ethics Commission has contacted him.
An ethics commission investigator told The Reporting Project on April 4 that, by law, the ethics commission staff cannot discuss investigations or confirm when it is conducting investigations.
The vote to align the management structure with board policy and common practice came after the board went into a closed-door, executive session with a representative of the K-12 Business Consulting firm it hired to find a new superintendent – the district’s third in eight years.
The search firm had been on a listening tour throughout the district during the past month, and what it heard repeatedly was, “existing dysfunction amongst the board and district leadership creates mistrust of the leadership team within the district and community,” according to a draft copy of a K-12 “superintendent search profile” obtained by The Reporting Project.
The report said that board members told the firm about a “lack of communication, trust and respect between the board, superintendent and treasurer.”
Administrators spoke of “poor relations between top district level leadership, absence of shared vision amongst the leadership team, (and) confusion as to who to turn to for decisions and clarifications.”
Teachers said the “district organization chart causes confusion as to who to contact for clarification when needed; district-level leadership’s inability to work together has caused concerns and rumors in buildings about unfair treatment, unequal pay and allegations of nepotism and favoritism.”
Support staff raised concerns about a “lack of leadership and vision coming from the central office leadership team.”
Parents and community members cited “conflict and distrust amongst the board, superintendent and treasurer is apparent to the community, staff and students; district organization chart does not align with state law; need to improve transparency in decision-making and communication.”
High school students said “the district organization chart does not meet state law; the lack of teamwork at the board, superintendent and treasurer level has created confusion and distrust in school buildings and the community.”
And those were comments gathered in just the past month. For years, the board of education has been told by its own lawyer, its superintendents and consultants that it needs to fix the unusual management structure that has helped foster the “dysfunctional environment,” according to one former superintendent.
Vance repeatedly thanked the Northridge community members for their feedback and suggestions to the superintendent search team.
Mr. Lewis said he was happy with the decision to move his duties as business director to the new superintendent for what Mr. Lewis said will be his last fiscal year with the district. He has told the board he plans to retire in 2027 at the end of his current contract.
The school board’s next regular meeting is at 6:30 p.m. on May 19 at the district office, 6097 Johnstown-Utica Road.
Alan Miller writes for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here.