My goal for this newsletter is to provide a regular plain-language summary of what has happened in the Oxford Street Education/Croft School bankruptcy, and to flag key deadlines and dates. This issue covers the continued Meeting of Creditors held on August 19, and filings from August 6 through August 20, 2026.

The short version of yesterday's meeting: Oxford Street Education board member Rishi Shukla served as a representative of the debtor, and testified that Scott Given was altering the financial data the Board relied on: inflating income, cutting expenses, and removing liabilities from spreadsheets before board meetings. As best as I can tell, the trustee appears to be looking at whether the bankruptcy estate can bring claims against others, including potentially Oxford Street's Board, not only against Scott Given.

Key dates & deadlines

• August 25, 2026, 11:59 p.m. — Deadline to object to the trustee's three pending motions (one to end Oxford's 401(k) retirement plan, two seeking records from Oxford's outside accountants; all three were described in Issue #8)
• September 9, 2026, 10:15 a.m. — Hearing on those three motions
• October 20, 2026, 9:30 a.m. — Continued Meeting of Creditors (further questioning of Oxford)

The Meeting of Creditors, and a Note on This Issue

The trustee conducted a meeting of the creditors of Oxford Street Education, which sent board member Rishi Shukla on its behalf to answer questions under oath about its bankruptcy petition and the Oxford Street business (Oxford Street is the legal name of the entity that ran the Croft Schools). The meeting ran from approximately 9:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., with few breaks. I have tried in the past to keep this newsletter as "just the facts," but I don't have a transcript of the meeting, and the summary that follows necessarily involves my own impressions. That makes this issue different in kind from the earlier updates, which I have tried to keep entirely factual.

My biases and conflicts are on the table: my son was enrolled at the Croft School in JP, I advise the parent organization that raised the funds to keep the JP school open (whose conflicts with the board have been well documented), my family invested in Croft Bonds and have a $20,000 claim for prepaid tuition payments.

Why the Trustee Cares

Most of the questioning at the meeting was conducted by the trustee himself, Harold Murphy. Take a step back: Mr. Murphy's job as the trustee is to determine what assets the bankruptcy estate has available to satisfy creditors. Oxford Street had few assets it could sell at an auction, so the organization's assets are almost all its litigation claims: essentially, rights the company has to sue those who caused it harm. So while it was never explicitly stated, much of the questioning seemed to really be an investigation into whether the bankruptcy estate can bring claims against others beyond Scott Given.

A tell along these lines: Mr. Shukla was represented at the meeting not just by Oxford Street's bankruptcy attorney, but also by the Board's own attorney.

(The estate also has the right to claw back payments the school made in the run-up to the bankruptcy filing — that is, to sue to get that money returned to the estate, so it can be shared among all creditors rather than staying with whoever happened to be paid first. Those rules reach furthest for payments made to insiders, meaning people close enough to the company to have influenced it, such as officers, managers, and their family members. Here that would include payments made to Scott Given, his family members, and other insiders. This is bread-and-butter stuff that the trustee is certainly working on.)

What the Board Saw

Murphy established that the Board met on a quarterly basis, often at one of the Croft School locations, often for 2–3 hours. For each meeting, Shukla testified that Given would provide a Word document summary and agenda, along with an Excel spreadsheet that contained financial information and information about school enrollment and other key indicators. Shukla testified that, unbeknownst to the Board, Given was taking data from Oxford Street's outside accountants and manipulating it in these Excel spreadsheets before passing it along to the Board. He testified that Given inflated income, reduced expenses, and removed liabilities (such as the Croft Bond loans from parents) from the spreadsheet.

Much of the testimony established that Oxford Street was not profitable: it was operating at a loss at all three locations throughout its existence. Shukla testified that the hope was that the schools would turn profitable once each had established third or fourth grade classes. But it became obvious during the testimony that all three schools faced repeated cost overruns, and were never managed to their prepared budgets.

The schools were often in the position of needing quick, short-term cash. Shukla testified that he understood that those cash infusions, whether loans or additional equity investments, came from existing investors, Given, or his family (his "father and father-in-law"). There was testimony that Oxford Street at one point, to satisfy Leader Bank, had someone loan the organization $750,000, which was repaid only a few days later, using proceeds Leader Bank loaned the organization. (In other words, as best as I understood it, to access a $2.5 million line of credit from Leader Bank, Leader required a $750,000 balance. But after receiving the line of credit, Oxford Street immediately repaid the short-term loan with money from the line of credit. This struck me as not all that different in kind from the kind of robbing-Peter-to-pay-Paul that eventually brought the organization down.)

Much of the questioning revolved around these "yellow" and "red" flags that the Board could have seen during its meetings and its supervisory work.

There was also testimony that the repeated need for cash inflows caused the Board to hire an outside consultant to do a financial analysis of the school and its cash flow in the summer of 2025. Apparently, this consultant provided the report and model to Given, who, according to Shukla, modified the report and model before passing it on to the rest of the Board. What was not established is what the report and model showed when the consultant handed them to Given, or what the Board actually received. Murphy spent real time on this line of questioning. My own read of why it matters is below.

My Read

Shukla appeared (and again, this is my admittedly biased impression) extremely defensive throughout the meeting. He said what seemed like dozens of times that "this was a startup," which was his explanation for why Given had sole financial authority with no other controls in place. (This included the Board's authorization for Given to pay himself — both in salary and to repay himself for loans he made and interest.) Nor was this an unadvised or unsophisticated operation. Oxford Street was represented by Gunderson Dettmer, a sophisticated law firm, and had raised millions of dollars from serious investors. Given and Shukla met at Harvard Business School, and other board members brought comparable credentials. And while it may have been a "startup" in some sense, it was also a school system with hundreds of students and families relying on it.

My own view: the little league snack shack in my hometown had more financial controls over cash coming in and out than the Croft School did. Rather than reflect on this clear mistake, Shukla appeared to double down: his testimony, even with a direct question (asked by counsel for the bondholders), was that it was appropriate for Given, as the CEO, to be the only person with access to the finances in this multimillion-dollar enterprise.

The summer 2025 consultant engagement is, to me, the most interesting thing that came out of the testimony — and not because of what the report said (which we still do not know). The Board commissioned an outside financial analysis because the schools kept running out of cash. That request is itself an admission: the Board saw enough to want an independent look at the numbers. Having asked for it, the Board then let Given be the sole recipient of the report — on Shukla's own account. Whatever the report contained, routing the independent check through Given alone strikes me as, at best, a serious lapse. What the report showed before Given touched it, and indeed what it showed even after Given's alleged edits, may well be the most important unanswered question coming out of the meeting.

Shukla's overall message appeared to be that he and the Board were as much a victim of Given's alleged fraud as everyone else. He took no responsibility for the outcome. He did not express a single moment of self-reflection about what he or the Board could have done differently; if anything, he was defiant.

What's Next

The question now is whether the trustee will seek to hold the Board accountable in any way for what happened. It was clear from the questioning that he has not ruled anything out. The meeting was continued to October 20, 2026 at 9:30 a.m., and I will report on it when it happens.

No other major filings this week. The claims deadline has run. The next issue will include an analysis of what claims have been filed.

Key Links

• Public Docket
• Bankruptcy Filing (June 5, 2026)
• Notice of Bankruptcy (June 5, 2026)
• Massachusetts Securities Division complaint against Scott Given (June 30, 2026)

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This newsletter is a community update. Nothing in it is legal advice and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. If you need advice about your own situation, please consult a lawyer.