---
title: "A hidden $13 million debt closed two Croft School campuses; the smallest survived"
description: "Parents lent the for-profit school $6.7 million before the board accused its founder of hiding debt and faking records"
author: "Luis Goa"
published: 2026-11-03T10:30:00Z
modified: 2026-11-03T18:25:40Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/a-hidden-13-million-debt-closed-two-croft-school-campuses-th-a5ef94
language: en
tags: ["education", "fraud", "boston", "us"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# A hidden $13 million debt closed two Croft School campuses; the smallest survived

*Parents lent the for-profit school $6.7 million before the board accused its founder of hiding debt and faking records*

By Luis Goa · November 3, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/a-hidden-13-million-debt-closed-two-croft-school-campuses-th-a5ef94

## In brief

- Croft charged $35,000 a year; its board says founder Scott Given hid $13 million in debt and fabricated records
- State regulators say 46 Jamaica Plain families lent $3.5 million and 30 South End families lent $3.2 million
- Massachusetts securities regulators allege commingling and vacations on school funds; four investigations are open
- Jamaica Plain (250 students) closed in June; South End parents opened South End Village Academy on September 8
- The board says Given deceived it and that a sale was stymied by uncertainty, timing and South End withdrawals

The Croft School charged families about $35,000 a year — cheap for a Boston private school — collected more than $6.7 million in loans from 76 of those families, and then, in a single email on a Friday morning in mid-March, told parents it faced collapse. Within days the board would accuse Croft’s founder, Scott Given, 46, of hiding $13 million in debt and fabricating financial records, [the Boston Globe reported](https://bostonglobe.com/2026/11/03/magazine/croft-school-parents-south-end-campus/). Seven months later, two of the school’s three campuses are gone; the third exists only because its parents built a new school themselves.

Croft was one school in name and three campuses in practice: Jamaica Plain, the South End, and Providence. It promised a diverse urban environment with private-school perks, steep discounts and aid for families with financial need, and teachers parents describe in near-uniform terms as beloved. “It’s not just a school, it’s a community,” one parent, Ullman, told the Globe days after the email arrived. “It’s an absolutely incredible place.”

## A founder with a record

Given, a Dartmouth and Harvard Business School graduate, left management consulting for public education. In 2010 he founded the nonprofit Unlocking Potential, now the UP Education Network, which turned around failing schools in Lawrence and Boston. He resigned in 2016 after WBUR reported that a Dorchester school his nonprofit operated had issued nearly 70 suspensions to kindergartners — more than any other school in the state. He opened Croft’s first campus in Providence in 2018, named for a Reading Memorial High School track coach who had influenced him; Jamaica Plain followed in 2020, the South End in 2022. He structured Croft as a for-profit, which kept its finances private. As late as fall 2025 he was pitching a Cambridge campus as “another magical place to teach and learn,” per an October 2025 social media post — even as, state regulators later said, tuition was not covering expenses after pricey campus improvements. In January he emailed families that the Cambridge plan was off but the other schools were strong: “We remain proud of the work we do each day and grateful for the trust you place in us.”

![A cream building with coral roofs stands above a large dark sinkhole, with its foundations exposed against a teal background.](https://rews.cc/img/4dfe4de20206bd63233ae718ac859ec78f91b947.webp)

## The March disclosure

On March 13 the board emailed parents: it had placed Given on leave a week earlier, had found “serious irregularities” in Croft’s finances, and intended, in its words, “to find out what happened.”

What state securities regulators alleged in a June complaint, filed by the Securities Division of Secretary of State William Galvin’s office, was this: Given commingled his own money with the school’s, used school funds to pay for lavish family vacations, and began selling off his personal equity interest in Croft before the collapse. In the spring Given had denied using Croft funds for personal benefit. In June, before the complaint, he released an apology through his attorneys, confessing to borrowing money from family and the Croft Bonds program to keep the school going while concealing its finances, and denying that he took money out for luxury or enrichment. “Words alone cannot repair what I harmed,” he wrote. “But I am deeply sorry for the lies, for the betrayal of trust, and for the pain and instability my actions caused throughout this community.” He did not respond to the Globe’s request for comment. Given and the now-shuttered school are also under investigation by the US attorney’s office, the SEC, and Boston police, and Oxford Street Education LLC, the entity that owns Croft, filed for bankruptcy earlier this year.

![An open ledger on a blue background has ruled lines, a yellow pencil, and a dark pocket receiving gold coins.](https://rews.cc/img/6af9574258c93c94ebfafb2d6777efd6aaf88561.webp)

## The rescue arithmetic

Parents had fewer than 60 days — from the disclosure to the board’s announcement that the campuses would close at the end of the 2025–2026 school year — to save their children’s schools. The money already in was substantial: state regulators report more than $3.5 million in loans from 46 Jamaica Plain families and nearly $3.2 million from 30 South End families — roughly $76,000 and $107,000 per lending family. The flow, per the board and regulators: 76 families —$6.7M in loans + tuition near $35,000 per student per year→ Croft (Oxford Street Education LLC), where regulators say school funds were commingled with Given’s personal accounts, with school money going to family vacations while tuition failed to cover expenses.

The startup math split the campuses. Jamaica Plain was the larger school — 250 students, preschool through Grade 5 — and parents estimated they needed $3 million to launch a replacement, about $12,000 per enrolled student. The South End enrolled 120 children, preschool through Grade 2, and its estimated cost was about $1 million, roughly $8,300 per student. Both Boston campuses raised enough in the spring to finish the term, hoped for an outside buyer, and quietly began building their own schools in parallel. Providence’s campus ran its own course through Rhode Island’s courts and closed earlier this year. In June, Jamaica Plain’s Washington Street campus closed for good, scattering students into Boston public schools and other private institutions.

The South End’s parents took control. They formed a new school, South End Village Academy, with many of the same students and teachers, and on September 8 more than 80 students walked into the familiar building for their first day, according to Ming Min Hui, the parent of a kindergartner and chairwoman of the new school’s board.

![Two hands cradle a yellow backpack shaped like a house, with a dark blue arched doorway, against a teal background.](https://rews.cc/img/94b50764e8bd86392c43ece28c25d99d28b0dcb9.webp)

## Who gets the blame

The divergence left bitterness between campuses, parent groups, and the board — and months later it has not faded. One Jamaica Plain parent, speaking anonymously out of concern about retaliation from other former Croft families, described watching the South End open while JP had nothing: “I donated money for this, with the idea that we were going to continue.” Families blame not just Given but the board for failing to oversee him and Croft’s finances.

The board, in a statement to the Globe, said its members were “among those deceived,” that Given manipulated Croft’s finances and concealed its true condition, and that it tried to sell the Boston campuses — hiring a bankruptcy attorney, a restructuring officer, and an independent sales adviser — but was stymied by the “financial uncertainty” around the school, a short time frame, and the withdrawal of dozens of South End families in early May. “Any suggestion that the board was unwilling to pursue viable acquisitions is false and inconsistent with the facts,” the statement said.

Ullman, who had only wanted a good school for her child, put the experience in two sentences: “It was The Hunger Games. Not a single parent or family asked or wanted to be in that situation that we were in.” What remains open is arithmetic, not sentiment: whether Oxford Street Education’s bankruptcy returns any of the $6.7 million parents lent, and what four separate investigations — Galvin’s securities division, the US attorney, the SEC, and Boston police — conclude about the $13 million that did not appear on Croft’s books until it was too late to matter.