Penn State alumnus Matt Miller named Pa. 2025 National Distinguished Principal

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Matt Miller, a Penn State alumnus and elementary school principal in the Central York School District, has been named Pennsylvania’s National Distinguished Principal for 2025 by the Pennsylvania Principals Association. Miller will be honored at special awards ceremonies later this year.

Miller, who graduated from the College of Education with a bachelor’s degree in kindergarten and elementary education in 1998, has worked in education for 27 years, initially as a second-grade teacher before spending the past 20 years in administration. He became principal of Roundtown Elementary School — a building which serves between 465 and 635 students per year in kindergarten through third grade — in August 2009.

“I'm honored, I'm humbled, super satisfied, all of that, but I think, just for me, it was really special to know that everybody has a hand in this,” Miller said. “No leader goes it alone, I always say that. You are only as good as the people you surround yourself with, so this is really something special that not just my teachers and staff, but our whole community can feel good about, because if you're a good leader, everybody that you encounter and engage with, you take a little piece of them to make yourself better and be the best version of yourself that you can.”

Despite his success in elementary education, Miller said that was not what he initially wanted to choose as a career. However, it was an opportunity as a young man to assist teaching children a foreign language that led him to see he could apply his interests to a career in teaching.

“I had initially strongly considered and was getting set to go into the theater arts program,” he said. “I took French in high school and had the opportunity to go to our elementary school, that I actually went to elementary school in, and work with those children to help teach them French. We would use puppets and things like that, and I was like, ‘Wow, this is really like being on stage. It’s just your audience is your students.’ And I started to think I might do this. I guess that was really born out of my love of theater, my passion to entertain, and then being able to translate that into engaging learning for my students.”

But, Miller said, when his career as a teacher began — at the same school he now leads — he never envisioned himself as a principal. He said that it was the encouragement of his coworkers that led him to pursuing a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction from Penn State York before obtaining his principal certification from Penn State Harrisburg.

Miller said it was the quality and academic rigor of his experience that really prepared him to excel in the education field, as well as being part of the vast network of Penn State alumni.

“I feel very strongly that a big piece of my success in my career has been Penn State,” he said. “Whether it was my undergrad work, my master's degree, my principal certification, I found every one of those puzzle pieces to be challenging, engaging, and helped create who I am. I know the College of Education is still super strong and they're doing incredible work with great professors, and that's really what I want people to know — that when you graduate from Penn State, not only do you have an excellent degree that you're more than qualified for, but you have an entire section of people rooting for you. We stand strong together, and everywhere you go, every corner of the globe, there are Penn Staters.”

While Miller said he enjoyed his time leading a classroom, he now has the opportunity to have a positive influence on more students as a principal than he ever could have as a teacher.

“I didn't think I would ever stop being a teacher because I loved it so much,” Miller said. “But then, something starts to happen where you recognize that, now maybe my audience is 600 kids instead of just 25 or so and you start to see the impact that you can make, at a much higher rate. And then you've got the families, too, and I just loved working with the families. And you get a lot of kindergarten, first-grade families. These are their first experiences in public school, and I love just making that really nice for them, and gentle because it's hard to send your baby off to school. It's a big deal, and I love to make that as easy as possible. But I've generally been a pretty happy dude. I love the work that I do.”

That work ranges from the expected — things like scheduling, planning, oversight and making sure the school is meeting the educational needs of its students — to some duties that probably aren’t always associated with a principal, like pitching in on maintenance and repairs and sometimes assisting with cleaning.

But one of the biggest challenges, Miller said, is being there for students who may not have the most stable or positive home situation, which oftentimes places a significant obstacle in the way of those students reaching their educational potential.

“In this day and age, there are so many families who are breaking apart or there is a pseudo-family that has stepped in, because one or more parents are incarcerated, and so you've got grandparents or other family members who are taking the charge,” Miller explained. “And they're worried, they're scared. I spend a lot of time just listening and talking to families.

“Sometimes, I even share this with my own dad, and he's like, ‘Why are you doing that? Isn’t your job just to run the school?’ And I'm like, ‘It is, but my job is also to be a listener, and my job is also to figure out if there are additional services that we can get for a family or for a child. It's not all schedules and discipline and those kinds of things. It's a big piece of just being there to show that you care.’”

Looking at Miller’s office, that is easy to see. On the wall directly across from his desk are what Miller estimates to be around 700 photos of what he calls “special memories” — people and moments that have meant something to Miller over a career spanning multiple decades.

Among those was having a first-grade student who first developed the concept of a “buddy bench” — a place where students who are feeling lonely can go and signal to others that they’re seeking new playmates. Years later, he said, tens of thousands of these benches can be found all over the U.S. and in more than a dozen countries.

Another was when, during the remote learning made necessary by the COVID-19 pandemic, Miller said he began dipping into his theater background by doing dozens of educational variety shows for children in the style of the longtime children’s TV program “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood,” in which he did things like use puppets and tell stories.

And just last year, he traveled to Liberia and spent three weeks visiting schools there and helping to provide them with school supplies.

It all stems from one of Miller’s core beliefs — that school should be a safe place where everyone feels like they belong.

“My mantra, my core values, not just for myself, but for the school, is making sure that we are a school of significance, belonging and fun,” Miller said. “So, every decision that I make, everything gets filtered through that. These experiences are the pieces that are at the heart of what keep you going.”

The Pennsylvania Principals Association membership of approximately 3,500 is composed of elementary, middle level and secondary school principals, assistant principals and other educational leaders and is affiliated with the National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP) and the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP).