Legal Aid to Put on Loan Forgiveness Clinic for Students of Shuttered Beauty School

Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles is holding a free clinic to help students of the abruptly closed Marinello Schools of Beauty navigate their options for student loan forgiveness.

The legal aid nonprofit is also warning students to be leery of predatory for-profit schools that may try to swoop in and take advantage of the situation.

Last week the school announced the closure of its campuses -- including locations in Lake Forest, Huntington Beach, Anaheim, West LA, Los Angeles, Simi Valley, Reseda and Murrieta -- as a result of the U.S. Department of Education’s decision to cut off access to student financial aid.

The DOE said it had determined that Marinello was knowingly requesting federal aid for students based on invalid high school diplomas, under-awarding Title IV aid to students, charging students for excessive overtime and engaging in other acts of misrepresentation.

The free clinic on student loan forgiveness is at 5 p.m. Wednesday at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, 1102 Crenshaw Blvd., Los Angeles.

“Our students depend on higher education institutions to prepare them for careers through a quality education,” Undersecretary of Education Ted Mitchell said. “Unfortunately, some schools violate their trust through deceptive marketing practices and defraud taxpayers by giving out student aid inappropriately.

“These unscrupulous institutions use questionable business practices or outright lie to both students and the federal government, “ Mitchell said. “In these cases we are taking aggressive action to protect students and taxpayers from further harm by these institutions.”

In a statement, Marinello said its students have been unfairly victimized by the DOE’s decision.

“Our students have gone to great lengths to complete their education to better their lives,” Marinello said. “The department’s actions have deprived Marinello’s students of the opportunity to complete their education at Marinello without interruption.”

The school said that when the DOE began to withhold funds from students two months ago, Marinello officials asked for information about how to address the department’s problems, but received no answer.

“We are confident we would have been able to address them given Marinello’s long history of compliance with regulatory requirements,” the statement said. “The department waited until we were past the point of no return financially to allow us any opportunity to respond to its unfounded allegations.”

About 1,500 students are registered at the cosmetology school’s campuses in West Covina, Palmdale, Whittier, Bell, West Los Angeles, Reseda, Burbank, Inglewood, San Diego and elsewhere in the Southland.

--City News Service, photo Picserver.org