Croft Founder Apologizes to School Community; Lawsuit Filed by Teachers and Staff

To the Croft Community,

I understand that for some people, hearing from me at all may feel painful, upsetting, or unwelcome. Some may choose not to read this letter. Some may read it and find the words empty or insufficient. Others may find some value in hearing directly from me. 

I am writing because I owe this community an apology, and because I owe people an honest attempt at answering the question many have asked: why?

Over a period of years, I lied to many people who trusted me deeply. I lied to families who entrusted me with their children’s education and their hard-earned tuition dollars, to teachers and staff who devoted their professional lives to these schools and students, and to investors and lenders who trusted me with their resources. I distorted reality repeatedly, including to people who believed in me and who had every reason to expect honesty from me.

Nothing in this letter is intended to excuse or lessen the seriousness of my actions. I recognize and take full responsibility for the bad decisions I made. Many people loved these schools and worked tirelessly for them without compromising their integrity. I did not do the same.

What makes this so difficult to explain is that I genuinely loved what we were building. I believed deeply in the schools, in the model, in the teachers, in the students, and in the three school communities. The classroom environments that teachers and students created, and the instruction and learning taking place within those classrooms, were awesome. The work teachers were doing every day was phenomenal and consistently so.  The relationships families built with one another were meaningfully deep and special.  And, though I am biased, I sincerely believed we had THE three best school leaders in the world.  

I also believed that the schools represented something societally important: communities where children from different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds could learn, grow, and belong together in ways that remain far too uncommon in education.  To me, Croft became something unusually meaningful and worth protecting.

Eventually, however, I could see that the financial reality of the organization was not yet matching my expectations or projections. The average tuition levels at Croft Providence were lagging below what I had anticipated.  Construction costs at all three campuses had risen sharply and were far beyond what I had projected.  At the same time, I could also see tangible momentum building, believed the model could work, and felt sustainability was so close. And, per above, I believed that what was happening inside the schools mattered and deserved to survive.

I wish so much that I could turn back the clock to demonstrate trust in our investors and board members to collaboratively figure out the best pathway forward in a way that valued what we were building together.  Instead, I was fearful that if our investors or board members fully understood the financial reality at that moment, they would take actions that would require us to downsize or shut down the schools before they had the chance to become what I believed they could become. 

That fear does not justify what I did.  But it is the truth.  

I began convincing myself that if I could temporarily stretch certain numbers or obscure certain realities, the underlying success of the schools would eventually catch up and make those distortions temporary. Instead, the gap between reality and what I was representing widened as our scale quickly grew. And once I crossed those lines, I felt trapped.

Because I had distorted reality in hopes that reality would eventually catch up (and it did not), I made increasingly bad decisions to avoid collapse. First, it was pouring enormous amounts of my own family’s personal financial resources into the schools. Then it was seeking and accepting substantial financial support from my father and from my wife’s parents. And then it was the development of the Croft Bond loan program. At every stage, I told myself I was buying time for the numbers to stabilize. At every stage, I was becoming more detached from reality and more willing to treat truth itself as negotiable.  

I plunged into the moral danger of believing that preserving something quite meaningful justified my actions.  I had no right to make that choice.  

What I catastrophically failed to fully grasp was that my actions were not only risking consequences for me. Somewhere in my distorted thinking, I came to imagine the worst end of this story as me eventually being exposed, humiliated, and fired.  With deepest regret, I did not allow myself to fully confront the possibility that my actions could devastate the lives of so many other people: teachers, staff, families, children, investors, lenders, colleagues, friends, and my own family members.

I will carry enormous guilt, shame, and remorse for the rest of my life for what I did to this community.

Croft teachers and staff: you created schools more joyful, loving, and extraordinary than I could ever have imagined back in 2017. You gave my own two children an elementary school experience beyond anything I could have hoped for as a father. Over the last several months, I have thought constantly about the fear, anger, instability, sadness, and harm my actions brought into your lives. None of you deserved that.

Croft families: nearly every one of you placed trust in me personally through conversations, tours, and years inside these schools. You entrusted me with your children. Instead of honoring that trust with full honesty, I violated it. I disrupted your children’s education and damaged a community that mattered so much to many of you. 

Croft investors and lenders, including those who provided money for what I called Croft Bonds: I lied to you. I understand that plainly and fully now. Many of you supported Croft because you believed in the mission and because you trusted me personally. I betrayed that trust. At no time prior to March 6, 2026, did I ever imagine that money invested in or lent to the schools would not be repaid, but my failure to grasp that possibility does not change the harm I caused.

I also want to say clearly that I did not take money out of the schools for personal luxury or enrichment. In fact, I poured enormous amounts of my own family’s resources into trying to keep the schools operating, while also hiding the severity of the situation from the people closest to me. That does not lessen the deception or the damage I caused. But because many people understandably may wonder about this specifically, I believe it is important to state it plainly.

Shilpa, Annie, and Cristina: the three of you built outstanding schools. You took an initial vision and, through relentless hard work, wisdom, optimism, and leadership, created stunningly beautiful school communities. Your roles demanded enormous amounts from you every day, and you handled those demands with grace.  I was in awe of you.  In my own mind, I told myself that I was protecting your work and your schools. Instead, through my actions, I ruined all of it and created a nightmarish outcome.  I can only imagine what the last several months have been like for you and your teams as you have carried responsibilities and burdens you never should have had to carry. 

Kate and Erin: it was the honor of a lifetime to work beside the two of you for so many years, including prior to Croft. We often talked about how lucky we felt to lead Croft and to work with one another, and I felt that constantly; it was an immense source of personal happiness. You were the greatest professional partners I could ever have hoped for. I am profoundly sorry that I hid all of this from you and created this awful mess.

I respect that there are people who may never forgive me. Words alone cannot repair what I harmed. 

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.

Scott