State opens new front in its war on Stone Academy students. Judge enjoins state from requiring students to waive of rights.
Three state agencies are marking the first anniversary of the closing of Stone Academy by escalating their war on the more than 1,000 students who were locked out of their classes.. The for-profit nursing school students did not receive a traditional teach-out to allow them to complete the courses they had paid for. Their plight has only worsened in the year that followed.
A state judge intervened on behalf of the students Friday by enjoining the Office of Higher Education (OHE), the Department of Public Health (DPH) and the Office of Attorney General from proceeding with a scheme that would required students to waive their rights in exchange for reimbursement payments that did not include courses arbitrarily delated from their transcripts during an audit paid for and overseen by OHE and influenced by DPH.
The injunction follows weeks of fruitless attempts by lawyers representing students to persuade lawyers for the state to refrain from limiting students’ rights of recovery of the damages they suffered in the long mess. Lawyers for the students explained in their motion for an emergency injunction wrote:
At issue is the State’s demand that hundreds of former Stone Academy Students sign a
waiver of rights against the State in exchange for payment of just a small fraction of the damages
they incurred because of the bad conduct of both the Stone Academy Defendants and the
Connecticut’s Office of Higher Education and Department of Public Health. The State, and its
lawyers, should know better than to seek such a waiver of rights from persons, without them
having advice of counsel and particularly where, as here, the State has an obvious conflict of
interest.
Legislators sympathetic to the students will have an opportunity to inquire why OHE supports harming students when the agency’s leader, Timothy Larson, appears before the Appropriations Committee Tuesday to discuss its funding in Governor Ned Lamont’s budget proposal.
Published February 16, 2024.