Sawyer closing scatters students

TRANSFER STUDENTS: More than 300 students were left in the lurch after the Sawyer School shut down suddenly in December. Some students, including McKayla Ivins and Daniel Johnson, pictured above, transferred to Lincoln Technical Institute. / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY
TRANSFER STUDENTS: More than 300 students were left in the lurch after the Sawyer School shut down suddenly in December. Some students, including McKayla Ivins and Daniel Johnson, pictured above, transferred to Lincoln Technical Institute. / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY

Why the Sawyer School closed without notice at the end of December remains a mystery three months later to the state and 302 Rhode Island students who have been left to find new schools or career paths.
The few details that have emerged since hint at hidden financial issues, including $800,000 in owed federal taxes and a steep drop in federal student aid, from $7.4 million received for the 2011-2012 school year to $2.3 million for the 2012-2013 year, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
When the Sawyer School closed its Rhode Island and Connecticut campuses without warning, it was also appealing a $1.4 million judgment against it by DOE concerning problems with its management of federal financial aid.
While that potential liability was known to the state prior to the school closing, it was not enough to raise red flags about the school’s finances, said Mike Trainor, spokesman for the R.I. Office of Higher Education.
When state officials last August and September reviewed the school’s annual financial audit, the New York firm that did the audit determined the disputed money was not a “likely liability,” according to Trainor. And even if it did wind up having to pay DOE the $1.4 million, the state review at the time determined the school was in a strong enough financial position to easily absorb it, he said.
State and federal authorities have said little about pending investigations.
The R.I. State Police Financial Crimes Unit is reviewing financial, student and other documents, said state police spokesman Maj. Michael Winquist.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation was investigating Sawyer School after it shut down, Trainor said, but the agency would neither confirm nor deny an investigation last week.
For the 302 Rhode Island students and the estimated 1,200 students in Connecticut left in the lurch when schools operated by Academic Enterprises Inc. abruptly closed, solving the mystery of what happened is for investigators, and state and federal officials. Many of the former students have been busy rethinking and restarting their educational and career plans. Some are enrolled in other schools, some are still checking into options for finishing their training in business or medical-assistant programs. Others have dropped below the radar of education officials.
“I had 11 weeks left at Sawyer out of 13-and-a-half months. None of my credits transferred because the classes don’t line up the same,” said 22-year-old McKayla Ivins of Woonsocket, who has $11,000 in student loans from her studies at Sawyer. “I would have rather just finished my 11 weeks.”
Instead she’s one of two former Sawyer students who started classes in February at Lincoln Technical Institute, in a similar medical-assistant program.
Despite the unexpected change in plans, Ivins thinks Lincoln Tech will set her on the path to her goal of becoming a registered nurse.
The other former Sawyer student there is 39-year-old Daniel Johnson of West Warwick. He had switched careers when he enrolled in Sawyer School after 10 years of working for a financial company that decided to move out of Rhode Island.
“I had been at Sawyer about six months,” said Johnson. “None of my credits transferred. It’s bad and good,” he said. “You have to start fresh. But at least for the first two classes, they’re pretty much a repeat of what I did at Sawyer, so I have a good start.”
More transfers to Lincoln Tech could be in the pipeline.
“We’re working with four others, and some of them are waiting for their student loans to be resolved,” said Stephanie Miller, executive director of the school, located in Lincoln.
The R.I. Office of Higher Education sponsored a “transfer fair” on Jan. 17 at Community College of Rhode Island’s Liston campus in Providence to give former Sawyer students a chance to meet with representatives from 13 local schools.
About 40 students spoke with representatives from Lincoln Technical Institute at the fair, Miller said.
“What surprises me is that we didn’t have more students finding out what we could do for them,” she said. “They kind of disappeared. Some we could have absolutely helped.”
About 200 displaced Sawyer students attended the transfer fair, said Trainor. “It’s impossible for us to track how many of those have actually transferred to another school. We haven’t been able to follow the students individually,” he said. “We got them to the fair and connected them to the schools, but we don’t have the manpower to follow up by phone.”
Rhode Island College representatives talked with 92 students at the transfer fair, and 84 came to the campus for individual appointments, said Jenifer Giroux, the college’s vice president for professional studies and continuing education.
“We worked with three of them who had job offers and just needed their internships verified,” Giroux said. “We had another five who needed to complete their internships and we could oversee that for them. They’re just about done.”
Another five former Sawyer students enrolled at RIC in the medical-assistant-certification course.
“They didn’t get transfer credits. Sawyer staggered their courses differently and had some mini-courses,” Giroux said. “Most of them had just begun, and they would have had to start fresh wherever they decided to go.”
Three of the 84 students who came to RIC for appointments are interested in bookkeeping and accounting, but they haven’t yet enrolled, she said.
RIC is working with another dozen or so students still deciding what to do, Giroux said.
CCRI offered a waiver of the $25 application fee to former Sawyer students. Three students applied for the waiver but haven’t enrolled yet, said spokeswoman Kristen Cyr.
Some former students managed to tie up loose ends at Sawyer, but that hasn’t yet meant a career path.
Twenty-one-year-old Melissa Hawkins of North Kingstown completed the medical-assistant training at Sawyer and managed to get her certificate after the school shut down.
Hawkins, who said she also has a pharmacy-tech certificate from Lincoln Tech. says the two programs piled up $20,000 in student loans. She’s starting a new job in about a week – at Subway.
“I should be working at a better job,” she said.
State education leaders voted to decertify Sawyer but can do little else, Trainor said. •

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