After 21 years in business, owner and Director Juliet Mee in December closed Professional Massage Training Center on Commercial Street.
The 20 graduates Dec. 21 were PMTC’s last, and the class brought the physical massage trade school’s total completion count to exactly 1,000. It’s a bittersweet milestone for Mee following her three-year legal battle to maintain the school’s accreditation through the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges. The governing body penalized PMTC in 2012 for high turnover, unqualified staff and faculty, and mismanagement of its library.
At its peak, the private, for-profit school brought in $2 million in annual revenue. But now facing federal liens of $74,238 in unpaid school taxes, in addition to other undisclosed debts, she’s selling the school and its 10,000-square-foot building, 229 E. Commercial St.
“We’re done, unless we can get someone in here to build the school up – and that’s a long shot,” Mee said. “People that have the kind of money to build a school like this don’t really look to Springfield to buy a school.”
With the loss of accreditation went PMTC’s access to federal financial aid. The funding, along with enrollment, steadily decreased to $298,080 last year from roughly $1.5 million in 2011 – the year before ACCSC’s decision.
“That’s why the majority of schools are [accredited], because they need those federal funds,” said Victory Trade School Chief Administrative Officer David Myers.
Although Victory Trade School doesn’t receive federal aid for its students, Myers said that doesn’t lessen pressure on the nonprofit culinary school to renew accreditation through the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools.
The process involves attending a workshop, preparing a campus effectiveness plan and completing a self-study over the next three months before an ACICS team performs an on-site evaluation. Although the school was accredited in 2014, Myers said the cycle will have taken 18 months to complete if VTS is renewed in December 2017.
“They put you through the wringer,” Myers said. “When they come, they don’t leave any stone unturned.”
Back and forth
The clash between PMTC and its accrediting body arose prior to the school’s second renewal cycle, when accreditors asked the school in December 2009 to “show cause why accreditation shouldn’t have been revoked on the grounds it was not financially stable,” according to ACCSC appeals panel documents. The question arose from an audited financial statement, which Mee said was from 2008 when few businesses were profitable.
The panel’s documents state while the ACCSC issued a probation order identifying areas of noncompliance, it vacated the order and deferred action against PMTC, opting to meet again after a June 2011 on-site evaluation. In denying the massage school’s reaccreditation, ACCSC cited issues with turnover related to five management personnel, management of the school’s learning resource system, a lack of minimum related work experience for two faculty and two staff, and a lack of verification of employment for two additional staff.
Mee disputes the accreditor’s methodology, noting the findings disregarded benchmarks achieved in student default rates, graduation and employment, the latter of which was quantified as 97-100 percent, according to the appeal document.
Jeffery Stanley, president and CEO of RWH Inc., the ownership entity of the Missouri College of Cosmetology, said his school also faces such standards from the Department of Education: a 50 percent completion rate, 60 percent licensure and 70 percent employment. With 89 students enrolled in 2014, the school cleared all three categories with room to spare. But with enrollment down 15 percent last year, he said the marks are harder to hit.
“If you have a smaller group of students and a shrinking school, all those numbers are more intensified,” Stanley said. “If you have larger numbers, you can absorb that a little bit.”
Facing loss of accreditation, PMTC appealed ACCSC’s decision, but an independent panel upheld the ruling. The school responded with a lawsuit against ACCSC in August 2012 and earned a temporary injunction by U.S. District Court Judge Liam O’Grady to reinstate PMTC’s accreditation. In January 2014, he upheld the accreditation and awarded the school $429,016 in damages.
“It wasn’t nearly what it cost us, but I felt like we were vindicated,” Mee said, estimating she spent $1.5 million on court costs, which included Kansas City-firm Dunn & Davison LLC and Virginia-based Rees Broome PC extending her credit.
The victory was short-lived. The following year, after the ACCSC and 23 other accrediting agencies filed an amicus brief, the U.S. Court of Appeals reversed O’Grady’s decision and upheld the revocation. The federal court ruled the original denial of accreditation was correctly administered by the ACCSC and based on substantial evidence, and that the district court “went far beyond the focus on procedural fairness” in reversing the accreditor’s denial.
“We had no expectation we would lose at the court of appeals because we had such a strong verdict,” Mee said. “It sucked, to say the least.”
“It’s over”
With PMTC’s accreditation again revoked, Mee sought help from other sources.
Following the court’s final decision, PMTC made a request to the U.S. Department of Education’s Accreditation Group requesting the department review the standards employed by the ACCSC in its review of the school. The July 2015 response from the department said staff found the accreditor to have consistently applied its standards, policies and procedures, which were in compliance with federal regulations.
Mee is scheduled this month to speak during ACCSC’s own reaccreditation process before the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity. She plans to make the NACIQI aware of what the ACCSC could do to schools by revoking their accreditation in the same manner. ACICS, Victory Trade Schools’ accrediting body, is also up for review and the Department of Education recently recommended denying the agency renewal of recognition.
“That’s the very last thing I have to do to put this to rest,” she said of the June 23 review. “But it’s over. It’s over for us, and the case is over.”
Mee sold the property next door at 233 E. Commercial St., leased by Drury University, for $250,000, and she cashed in retirement savings to cover roughly $125,000 in expenses associated with finishing 2015 classes.
The recovery period is starting. Mee opened a professional massage clinic, Skilled Touch, on the school building’s second floor in February and began working as a market associate for PACE Equity. The new lines of revenue are creating income to help pay back both the liens and undisclosed debt she owes to attorneys, family and friends. She’s also discussing the school’s sale with an undisclosed company and preparing to list property at 225 E. Pacific St., formerly Therapy Linen Care, which shuttered in January after the school – its largest customer – closed.
Despite mounting debt from court costs, tax liens and personal loans, Mee said bankruptcy is not an option. “My job is to do whatever it takes to pay this off,” she said.
