Nursing students bring second suit over closed CT school. This one is against state agencies.

A group of students in the now defunct Stone Academy’s nursing program have sued the state, claiming medical and educational regulators illegally invalidated portions of their academic records or have threatened to deny them licenses in the months following the school’s abrupt closure earlier this year.

It is the second class action by former nursing students, many of whom ran up tens of thousands of dollars in loan debt in hopes of obtaining licenses. The students are asking, among other things, to be compensated for career interruptions and reputational damage they attribute to the state.

In the first suit, filed three weeks ago, a different group of students claims the family that ran Stone Academy took their money even though they knew the school was in dire financial shape and probably incapable of providing accredited course and clinical training.

The new suit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court, asserts that, after the school closed, state regulators acted illegally by retroactively invalidating academic course credits accumulated by students during a period when Stone was operating as a state approved and licensed private occupational school.

The students argue in the suit that the unilateral state decisions invalidating credits and threatening licenses of those who had just passed a national examination violated their due process rights by denying them opportunities to participate in the review process or appeal outcomes.

“All the people in positions of trust failed our students,” said attorney David A. Slossberg, whose firm brought both suits. “The first lawsuit dealt with Stone Academy’s role in that. This lawsuit deals with the state’s role. And what we are focusing on with the state is very specific: Its post closure conduct.

“And I would go so far to say that these agencies have gone rogue. Instead of making things better, they have made things exponentially worse for our clients.”

Spokesman for the state Office of Higher Education and Department of Public Health, both named in the suit Tuesday, declined comment.

The abrupt and messy closing of Stone Academy has been a disaster for thousands of students, many of whom are single parents who struggled to balance home and work while borrowing heavily to obtain an education that would lead to higher paying positions.

The state relicensed the school for five years in November 2021, but within months the owners were in talks with state regulators, who had become concerned over academic performance.

Among other things, the passage rate for students taking the national licensing examination for practical nurses had slipped below 80 percent, a standard set in state law.

A year later, the Office of Higher Education notified the school that its license was in jeopardy over its failure to meet state standards. The state agreed to keep the license in place through March 2023 if the school paid for an audit to identify academic weaknesses.

The suit says Stone Academy reneged on its offer to pay for the audit and told state regulators it was closing in February.

The state decided to hire a private consultant to carry out the audit, and began a review of the transcripts of about 1,000 students, about 800 of whom were “active” students at the time of the closure, according to the suit.

In July the state released audit results declaring that about 77,000 of 102,000 clinical and course hours completed by the students were “invalid” — even though the instruction took place during a period when the school was validly licensed by the state.

The audit said the reasons for invalidating credits was the school’s failure to keep adequate records, including missing and incomplete attendance sheets; courses taught with a student/faculty ratio of higher than 10-1; courses taught by unqualified faculty; and clinical lessons conducted on campus or remotely.

After the audit, students received transcripts that identified which classes had been invalidated. Several students, according to the suit, never received an audited transcript, leaving them with no record of having completed courses. The students were not permitted, according to the suit, to provide records refuting the state’s conclusions.

While the audit was in progress, the Department of Public Health told “several hundred nursing students” who had been enrolled at Stone Academy after Nov. 2021 and who had passed the national licensing examination that they needed to return to school and take a refresher course “as a condition of continuing to practice as an LPN,” according to the suit.

The state told the recently licensed nurses that the refresher course would be voluntary. But, according to the suit, the message carried a caveat:

“…given the concern that the Stone Academy program may have failed to provide you with the learning and training experiences required to become licensed as a practical nurse, DPH may open an investigation into your preparation and may take disciplinary action against your license if the investigation reveals that you did not receive the preparation required by state law and regulation. Such disciplinary action could result in the loss of your license and would be reported to the National Practitioner Databank.”

Slossberg said he has learned through depositions associated with the suits that the state has so far begun investigations of the academic records of about 50 newly licensed nurses who would not agree to taking the voluntary refresher course.

Those who agreed to the refresher training have had to wait months, delaying their careers, according to the suit. Others whose course credits were invalidated have had their education delayed.

The students want compensation for the loss of the value of their earned academic credits and “stigma” the state audit process has attached to their careers.