Misti Livingston, a former superintendent and principal of the Oak Run School District in rural Shasta County, has filed a lawsuit alleging she was wrongfully terminated after the Shasta County Office of Education mismanaged the district’s finances and put the blame on her instead.
Livingston served as principal, superintendent, and special education teacher for the rural district from June of 2020 to January of 2025, when she was terminated following a series of growing financial issues. The rural district sits just more than 20 miles east of Redding, usually with only several dozen students for their entire student body.
The district’s board renewed Livingston’s contract from July of 2024 to June of 2027, yet just months later in December the board suddenly put her on administrative leave and eventually terminated her a month later in January, with “without cause” as the reason.
But Livingston claims the Shasta County Office of Education (SCOE) had a direct hand in causing the financial problems.
According to Livingston’s legal complaint, SCOE had assigned several staff members to monitor, audit, and assist the district in financial management, budgets, and operations, however she states she was left unsupported by SCOE despite their legal requirement to help, and from 2021 to 2024 her repeated requests for help in handling the district’s enrollment and average daily attendance data were ignored or outright refused.
The suit alleges this failure to assist Livingston resulted in major discrepancies in the district’s average daily attendance data, which determines how much funding a school gets, and in late 2024 SCOE and the state audited the district, finding there had not been proper documentation kept of students’ immunization records and independent study alternatives for 2021-2023, resulting in the state demanding funding back from the district, which directly led to SCOE labeling the district “at going concern,” meaning it was at risk of insolvency.
Oak Run owes the state about $825,000, no small number for a tiny school district with an annual budget of approximately $775,000. The FCMAT report on Oak Run detailed a number of other financial issues including the misreporting of ADA data, heightened deficit spending and a lack of business oversight, the latter of which was concerning because it increases the risk of inaccuracies, inefficiencies and potential fraud due to insufficient preventative and detective measures.
However, Livingston was exonerated of serious misconduct allegations before her termination.
The Shasta County Sheriff’s Office cleared Livingston of stealing from the cash box and all other alleged financial crimes, yet the Shasta County Office of Education included the debunked theft claims in the “lack of going concern” letter it sent to Livingston, the Oak Run board of trustees and the California Department of Education.
On November 20 last year, Oak Run Elementary School District Superintendent Misti Livingston received a letter from the Commission on Teacher Credentialing’s Division of Professional Practices that read: “The Committee of Credentials, after careful review and consideration of the materials contained in your file, has determined to close its investigation and to recommend no adverse action at this time.”
The exonerations from law enforcement and state authorities arrived just weeks before her termination.
The suit alleges the termination was entirely due to the actions of SCOE, both through their lack of support and alleged slander they levied against Livingston during meetings. As evidence she provided a Right-to-Sue notice she received from the California Civil Rights Department after she filed a civil rights complaint.
The Army veteran has fought back against disgruntled former workers, saying “They can’t do this to people anymore. We’re trying to create a peaceful community and they want to do the opposite. We need to stand together.”
In the viral moment that preceded the lawsuit, the district had struggled with Average Daily Attendance reporting, a metric California uses to distribute state funding to schools.
SCOE determined Oak Run Elementary was at risk of losing vital state funding after an audit by the Shasta County Health and Human Services discovered that only 13 of the 30 students had documentation proving immunization or a valid medical exemption. There were also discrepancies in the district’s Independent Study records, which tracks the school work of its homeless students, who make up roughly one-third of the student body, and these metrics are used to compute Average Daily Attendance, ADA, which determines how much funding the school district receives from the state.
The lawsuit against Oak Run Elementary School District and Shasta County Office of Education comes as Livingston seeks damages for wrongful termination and retaliation for whistleblowing activities, with no court date currently scheduled for proceedings.