Fired California school chief goes scorched earth after being blamed for district’s financial collapse

The ousted superintendent of a Northern California school district has slammed bosses after she was fired and allegedly blamed for its financial crisis.

Misti Livingston filed a lawsuit against Oak Run Elementary School District in Shasta County Superior Court claiming she was unlawfully dismissed in early 2025.

For nearly five years, Livingston served as the superintendent, principal and special education teacher for the K–8 district, tucked into the forested foothills east of Redding.

The lawsuit, shared by KRCR, pulls back the curtain on the district as it was pushed to the brink of insolvency.

Under California law, public school funding relies on Average Daily Attendance (ADA), but students without required immunization documentation or valid medical exemptions cannot be counted.

During school years between 2021 and 2023, the school over-reported the ADA.

The state of California had already disbursed funding based on the original higher numbers, which led it to impose a $825,000 fiscal penalty against the district, the Shasta Scout reported earlier this year.

For a small district operating on a budget of just $775,000, the penalty quickly became a crisis.

On December 13, 2023, the Shasta County’s Office of Education (SCOE) declared Oak Run was at high risk of insolvency and might soon be unable to meet payroll or vendor obligations.

In June 2024, the state’s Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team conducted a Fiscal Health Risk Analysis.

Oak Run scored barely 1.3 points away from an official “High Risk” classification for total financial failure.

According to the lawsuit, county education officials and district board members pinned the blame for the fiscal collapse squarely on Livingston, claiming she submitted invalid attendance certifications and allowed financial mismanagement.

But Livingston claims the SCOE continuously starved the district of mandatory administrative support, operational training and financial oversight, forcing her to manage complex state accounting, payroll and special education mandates virtually alone.

Amid these problems, the district’s board renewed Livingston’s contract from July of 2024 to June of 2027.

The lawsuit alleges an assigned SCOE accountant demonstrated a profound lack of basic knowledge regarding bank reconciliations, homeless student funds and state budget compliance, while SCOE simultaneously delayed funding reimbursements to the school.

Former staff members made explosive accusations against Livingston, alleging check fraud, theft from a parents/booster club cash box and civil rights violations.

SCOE forwarded these unverified claims to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) in an effort to strip Livingston’s teaching credentials.

A Sheriff’s Office investigation cleared her of all financial theft, SCOE issued a letter confirming no public funds had been misappropriated and the CTC closed its investigation without taking adverse action against her credential, A News Cafe had reported in 2024.

In her lawsuit, Livingston claims that the exonerations confirmed that the district’s financial disaster was structural and administrative — not the result of stolen funds.

Despite these clear exonerations — and coming off a glowing performance evaluation and a brand-new three-year contract extension signed in July 2024 — Livingston was unexpectedly confronted in her office by board leadership on December 9, 2024, and placed on administrative leave.

On January 21, 2025, the district officially fired her “without cause” via postal mail, reported the Shasta Scout. Livingston contends that “without cause” was merely a pretext. 

She alleges that the termination was a direct retaliation for her extensive paper trail of protected whistleblowing, which included formal complaints sent to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the California Civil Rights Department, state education officials, and media disclosures highlighting SCOE’s administrative failures.

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