Court reverses decision to close nursing school

In an unusual move, a Delaware Superior Court judge has overturned the State Board of Nursing's decision to close a New Castle-based nursing school.

Judge John A. Parkins, Jr., said the board did not give Leads School of Technology enough time to prove a turnaround was working and didn't give the school sufficient notice of many of the problems it said justified yanking its approval.

"We were very grateful for the ruling, because we knew how hard our clients had worked along with the former board chair to make improvements," said Matthew Boyer, an attorney with the firm Connolly Gallagher, which represented Leads. "It is a hard-working organization that is creating opportunities for people who need them.

In a statement, the Division of Professional Regulation, which includes the nursing board, said further hearings on Leeds would be scheduled. The school is free to take on more students.

Leads was recently renamed the "Adoni Health Institute."  It operates a Licensed Practical Nursing program — LPNs require less thorough training than registered nurses, but they are authorized to do things like operate medical equipment, take vital signs and administer medications.

Many of the students the school serves are African immigrants, for whom English is a second language.

The board placed Leads on conditional approval in 2012 because of unsatisfactory passing rates on the NCLEX licensing exam. State rules require a nursing school to keep passing rates above 80 percent — Leads' passing rate was 56 percent in 2012 and 32 percent in both 2013 and 2014.

The board had other complaints, too. The reports the school submitted were "at times indecipherable, frequently missing information, often internally contradictive, and submitted late," according to court documents. Students also complained to the board that they were getting ripped off, though the Department of Education later cleared the school after investigating those allegations.

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Starting in 2012, Leads began to overhaul its program with the help of Lucille Gambardella, a former nursing department chair at Wesley College and former chair of the Board of Nursing. The board approved an action plan that set a goal: 80 percent of students who participated in the new system would pass NCLEX on the first try.

The turnaround appears to have worked.

In the testing period between October 1, 2014, through Sept. 30, 2015, 24 of 26 students who took the NCLEX passed it, according to state figures. That's a rate of 92 percent.

Those figures were not available yet when the board met in January of 2015, however. The 2014 NCLEX scores were still far below standard, and the board voted to revoke the school's conditional approval, barring it from taking on new students.

Leads officials protested, arguing students who did not participate in the revamped curriculum were dragging down their pass rate. They told the board that 22 of the 23 students who were part of the overhaul passed, well above 80 percent.

In a July 29 ruling, Superior Court Judge John A. Parkins, Jr. said the board should have judged the school on students who were part of the turnaround.

Parkins also said the law required the board to give sufficient notice to Leads of the problems it saw and give the school time to correct them. He said the board only showed him one letter that counted as giving that notice, and it didn't mention many of the deficiencies the board eventually used to justify revoking approval.

"Leads cannot be faulted for failing to give information in its Annual Report it was never asked to provide," the ruling says.

Contact Matthew Albright at malbright@delawareonline.com, (302) 324-2428 or on Twitter @TNJ_malbright.