Hunt also worked for at least five other area schools and districts before he was arrested in May and indicted last month on 82 felony counts of rape, sexual battery and unlawful conduct with a minor for allegedly abusing underage boys and students.
Hunt listed that he had previously worked for the Vandalia-Butler district on at least some of the employment applications he submitted to other schools and districts, according to records obtained by this news outlet.
Personnel files
Hunt worked for Vandalia-Butler City Schools from August 2006 to March 2009; Tri-County North School District in Lewisburg from Dec. 1, 2009 to Sept. 6, 2014; Eaton Community Schools from 2009 to 2011; and Milton-Union Exempted Village School District from 2010 to 2012, according to school district records and the Montgomery County Prosecutor’s Office.
He also was employed until recently at St. Christopher School in Vandalia (beginning in 2011); Northmont City Schools (since 2013); and Miami Valley Career Technology Center in Englewood (since 2010).
Hunt also had a pipe organ repair, cleaning and service business, and he was a music director at a church in Union. Montgomery County Prosecutor Mat Heck Jr. said his office has identified at least eight victims who were male students at Northmont City Schools or who were underage boys who worked for his pipe organ business. Some of the alleged assaults happened at his job sites, which included local churches, Heck said.
Credit: Bryant Billing
Credit: Bryant Billing
Vandalia-Butler incident
Hunt’s personnel file from Vandalia-Butler schools contains a March 9, 2009 letter from Jeffrey Cassell, who at the time was the director of technology and professional staff for Vandalia-Butler City Schools.
The letter accuses Hunt of insubordination, immoral conduct, failure to maintain order of students, neglect of duty, failure of good behavior, malfeasance, misfeasance and nonfeasance.
The letter says the school district would be conducting a pre-disciplinary hearing on March 12, 2009 for Hunt in regards to multiple concerning incidents.
The letter says Hunt was warned in November 2008 to cease conversations and contact with a student, whose name was redacted, but Hunt continued to have interactions and even sent the student a letter that discussed the close friendship he believed they developed.
Cassell’s letter also says Hunt allegedly took part in inappropriate and sexually suggestive conversations with students that included bad language.
Hunt also was accused of permitting inappropriate physical contact between students and allowing them to threaten each other. And the school district alleged he violated Ohio law by allowing students to engage in disallowed activities while on the bus, including: walking around the bus; standing on the seats and opening the roof vent while the vehicle was moving; eating and drinking on the bus; sitting on their knees and facing backward; and sticking their hands out of the windows.
Hunt’s personnel file also includes a warning letter from December 2007 that says that he needed to stop using inappropriate language in the work place.
Hunt’s file includes his resignation letter, which only says: “Please accept this letter as notification that I am resigning my position with Vandalia-Butler City Schools effective March 16, 2009.”
A spokesperson for Vandalia-Butler City Schools said Hunt’s employment was so long ago that the school district does not have additional records of investigative files that may have been related to his employment. The Dayton Daily News asked if other districts contacted Vandalia-Butler to ask about Hunt before hiring him.
“None of our current administration were involved in or were knowledgeable of this situation that occurred sixteen years ago, so we cannot speak to what may or may not have been disclosed during Mr. Hunt’s job search,” the spokesperson said. “We simply do not know.”
Eaton, other schools
School records suggest Hunt was hired to be a substitute bus driver for Eaton Community Schools, Tri-County North Local Schools and Milton Union Schools in 2009, after he resigned from Vandalia. He was hired by Miami Valley Career Technology Center the following year, in spring 2010.
His employment applications with the Eaton school district and MVCTC say he worked at Vandalia-Butler City Schools for multiple years but resigned. His job application at MVCTC says he left Vandalia-Butler because of a “conflict of interest.”
Hunt’s personnel file at Eaton Community Schools contains a loose-leaf page of handwritten notes that appear to be dated July 20, 2011.
In prior months, Hunt had applied to pick up extra summer work at the district, the records show.
The notes say that Hunt didn’t have a good experience at Vandalia and Hunt had a problem on a bus with a suicidal student, who found Hunt online and emailed him. The notes say that a union official told other people that Hunt was having a sexually explicit relationship with a 14-year-old boy.
The page has no signature, so it’s unclear who the author was.
“The district does not know who wrote the note from 2011 or where the author learned about the allegations included in the note,” wrote Eaton Schools Superintendent Scott Couch in response to questions from the Dayton Daily News.
Couch said that the current administration is not aware of what the hiring process for bus drivers would have been in 2009, but today it involves reaching out previous employers.
“If a school district is listed as a former employer, the operations director always reaches out to those former employers,” Couch wrote.
Hunt’s employment with the Eaton school district ended in 2011.
“As a substitute bus driver, Hunt would not have been formally terminated, but rather he would not be used moving forward,” Couch wrote “The district has no documentation in its records that explain the circumstances of Hunt leaving the District.
Hunt’s personnel file at Eaton Community Schools also contains a March 2009 letter from the Vandalia-Butler City Schools transportation supervisor that lists the in-service training he received.
Hunt’s personnel records provided to the Dayton Daily News by Milton-Union Exempted Village Schools and Tri-County North Local Schools contain no documents that list his past employment. St. Christopher School has not provided this news outlet with personnel records.
Hunt’s job application to Northmont City Schools, dated Aug. 6, 2013, lists his work experience with Tri-County North, MVCTC and St. Christopher schools. The application does not say he worked for Vandalia-Butler City Schools.
State-level system
Back in 2010, schools had far fewer statewide tools for identifying past disciplinary matters during the employment screening process, according to Derrick Williams, MVCTC’s director of human resources.
The Ohio State Board of Education’s Office of Professional Conduct has since implemented an “educator profile” database that districts must consult before making any hiring decision, MVCTC said in a statement to this news outlet. The database reports the status of an educator’s license and public disciplinary actions.
“This state‑level system did not exist in its current form in 2010," MVCTC said in a statement. “Therefore, unless a prior district had submitted a formal professional conduct referral to the State Board and MVCTC knew to request it, disciplinary documents in a separate district’s personnel file would not necessarily have been discoverable during our 2010 hiring process.”
MVCTC says it has not received any reports or indications that Hunt had inappropriate interactions with its students. Eaton Community Schools also said it has no record of any issues with Hunt when he was employed with the district.
St. Christopher School said it has not been contacted by law enforcement about Hunt. Northmont City Schools said it does not discuss personnel matters. Other schools did not return requests for comment about Hunt’s case.
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