WellSpring School of Allied Health abruptly closed its three campuses, leaving Lawrence massage therapy students stranded days from graduation.
“No one knew that this was going to happen,” Tasha Johnson said. “I had about just two class days or clinic days left before I was expected to graduate.”
On June 3, students at WellSpring in Lawrence, Kansas City, Missouri, and Springfield, Missouri received an email informing them that the school would close effective immediately due to “financial duress.”
Now Johnson and dozens of other students, including Lindsey Box and Rilee Brown, are stuck in limbo.
Don’t miss a beat … Click here to sign up for our email newsletters
Click here to learn more about our newsletters first
They are unsure whether they will be allowed to graduate with the hours they’ve completed, whether their transcripts will be accepted by other schools, or whether they can even qualify to take the Massage & Bodywork Licensing Examination, which requires students to be currently enrolled or already graduated.
The school’s sudden closure comes after months of warning signs, but students received no advance notice of the immediate shutdown. In April, Lawrence students were told that the school was changing ownership in July; then, in May, they were told the Lawrence location would close on June 23.
Please support
The Lawrence Times!
Subscribe here.
Three students at different points in the program — Johnson, Box and Brown — were all days from finishing when the school shut down three weeks early.
Efforts to reach the owners of WellSpring, support staff and the person who students were told was set to take ownership were unsuccessful. The communications to students were provided by Johnson.
Johnson was 16 hours from completing her 800-hour certificate. Box had switched from the 1,100-hour associate’s program to the 800-hour certificate and was slated to finish her clinicals on Thursday of this week — about a week before the Lawrence campus was originally to close. Brown had just two days left in her certificate program.
“This, like, kind of just blindsided everyone,” Johnson said. “I was in a pit of despair for like a week or so.”
Box said she was pretty upset after being reassured multiple times that the school’s ownership change wouldn’t affect her education.
“They sent us emails multiple times that the school had been bought or was going to be bought, but that nothing should change with our education,” Box said. “Then all of a sudden, they turned it into, ‘Well, all the places are closing immediately,’ and then they really haven’t given us any more information or help or anything after that.”
Brown had started the program right after high school, driving an hour and a half twice a week from Everest, Kansas, because there was no option in her area.
“I felt like my future just got ripped out of my hands,” she said.
Students still don’t know what comes next.
Kansas students’ records are being held by the Kansas Board of Regents, and Missouri students’ records are being held by the Missouri Department of Higher Education & Workforce Development, according to an email to students on Wednesday. The email states that the process of transferring records is taking longer than anticipated.
Johnson said there had been no communication to her or her peers until that email, which she found in her junk folder, from the school’s IT email address.
“WellSpring will no longer be responding to individual email inquiries sent to the school. Please direct all questions or requests to the agencies and parties listed earlier in this email,” the email said.
Over the past couple of weeks, Box and Brown said they’d been bounced between agencies with no clear answers. Brown has contacted staff at the Kansas Board of Regents, who said they have her transcripts but don’t know if they’re complete, she said.
“I would like more information,” Brown said. “It seems like no one knows what’s going on, and they have just made us jump through so many hoops to just find out a very small answer.”
Box and Brown also face steep financial losses. Box paid around $3,500 out of pocket at enrollment and had student loans for the rest, totaling around $26,000. She’s looking into the closed school loan discharge program but hasn’t submitted an application yet, and she is worried about whether she can keep her completed hours.
Brown received Pell grants that covered part of her schooling but still owed roughly $13,000 out of pocket, of which she had paid $4,000.
For all three, local transfer options are limited. Box said most nearby programs are around 600 to 650 hours and don’t take financial aid.
Brown said she would have to start over at a program farther away than Lawrence.
“I don’t really have a lot of options near me,” she said.
Brown said she was passionate about massage therapy and excited to start the program right after high school. The closure and the lack of support have changed that.
“I’m pretty numb about it all,” she said. “It sucks. I really have no other words besides that. There’s nothing I can do. There’s nothing anyone else can do. It’s just we got to sit here and wait until people get their crap together.”
If local news matters to you, please help us keep doing this work.
Don’t miss a beat — get the latest news from the Times delivered to your inbox:
Click here to learn more about our newsletters first
Courtney Lane (she/her), staff reporter, has worked with The Lawrence Times since April 2026. She can be reached at [email protected].
Read her complete bio here. Read her work for the Times at this link, and see her photography for the Times at this link.
Latest Lawrence news:
Logan Pierson / Lawrence Times
