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The former finance director for the Public Schools of Brookline is suing the district and the town, alleging that she was illegally fired after a deputy superintendent asked her to falsify financial information and retaliated against her when she refused to do so.
Diane Johnson, who worked as the district’s finance director from November 2023 to September 2025, filed a class-action lawsuit in November, alleging that the district had withheld more than $10,500 of her wages after she was fired.
The complaint also alleges that Susan Givens, the district’s deputy superintendent of administration and finance, requested that Johnson “falsify financial information to present an artificially rosy version of the district’s financial affairs,” and retaliated against Johnson for months.
It also alleges that the district failed to adequately investigate Johnson’s claims of retaliation and fired her unlawfully, citing insubordination.
“That decision reeks of retaliatory intent given its timing, the nonsensical allegations it relied on, and the pattern of retaliatory conduct stretching back to January 2025,” Johnson’s attorneys wrote in the complaint.
Johnson did not respond to requests for comment from Brookline.News. Givens and Brookline superintendent Bella Wong declined to comment, citing a district policy of not commenting on pending litigation. School Committee chair Valerie Frias also declined to comment.
The suit is technically a class action suit, filed on behalf of former employees of the town of Brookline or Public Schools of Brookline who were involuntarily terminated within the past three years without receiving all of their wages on or before their last day of work.
There are “dozens if not more” former employees of the town and the district who were not paid their final wages at the time they were fired, the complaint alleges, without presenting further evidence.
Johnson’s attorneys, Francis J. Bingham and Brook Hopkins, also declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Suit stemmed from disagreement over how to present financial information
As finance director, Johnson was responsible for the district’s day-to-day finances, while Givens oversaw higher-level administrative finances, the complaint states.
According to the complaint, Givens asked Johnson on Jan. 14, 2025 to “present anticipated financial information as though it were the actual factual information” — a request that “was contrary to prior practice and would have conveyed inaccurate information” to the School Committee, the complaint states.
The information Johnson was allegedly asked to falsify was related to a “significant and sustained failure” by Liza O’Connell, Brookline’s former deputy superintendent of student services, who had not properly paid third-party providers of special education services, the suit alleges.
The result was an interruption in legally mandated special education services for some Brookline students, as some providers refused to work without pay.
“The anticipated numbers that Dr. Givens asked Ms. Johnson to insert would have given the impression that a major part of the problem with the SPED program was solved, when in reality it was not,” Johnson’s attorneys wrote in the complaint.
When Johnson refused to falsify the numbers, she alleges that she faced immediate retaliation from Givens, who began “screaming” at her and accused her of being unprofessional, according to the suit. Johnson filed a complaint to the district the next day, Jan. 15, 2025.
From Jan. 15 through Jan. 22, Johnson says she sent multiple emails to then-superintendent Linus Guillory and the district’s director of human resources, Alvin Cooper, alleging that Givens “is particularly vengeful when I stand up to her,” requesting not to meet with her alone, and asking for the district’s help, according to the complaint.
Under Brookline’s town and school policies, these complaints should have triggered an investigation, the complaint alleges — but no investigation was conducted for months.
From February through May, Johnson was “sidelined” from the budget finalization process, resulting in errors and confusion, the complaint alleges.
During that time, the suit claims, Givens continued to retaliate against Johnson by denying her time off to attend a professional development conference with the Massachusetts Association of School Business Officials. According to the complaint, Johnson’s employment contract mandates that she be allowed time off to attend professional development events and be reimbursed for those events, both of which Givens denied.
Johnson filed a formal retaliation complaint with the town, and “the town’s own attorneys conducted a flawed and untimely investigation,” the suit alleges. Nobody from human resources or the town contacted Johnson about the complaint, and it was referred to an outside law firm that has previously defended the school district and the town in court, Johnson’s suit states.
On Aug. 22, Johnson received a letter from the district which stated it found her retaliation complaint “unsubstantiated,” and cited an incorrect policy, according to the complaint.
“PSB covered its tracks with a biased investigation by its own lawyers that inexplicably took three months, ignored important information, and did not even recite the policy that was most applicable to Ms. Johnson’s complaint,” Johnson’s attorneys wrote.
A few weeks later, on Sept. 5, then-interim superintendent Bella Wong told Johnson via email that Johnson was being placed on administrative leave, effective immediately, for alleged insubordination, according to the complaint.
The following week, Johnson was notified she would be terminated on Sept. 18.
The district has not yet filled the finance director position, Wong told Brookline.News in January.
Since departing Brookline in the fall, Johnson has taken the top finance position at Stoneham Public Schools. She was hired as the district’s School Business Official in November, less than two months after being fired in Brookline.
Stoneham Public Schools did not respond to a request for comment from Brookline.News.