Parents sue Midtown school after sudden closure

For families at Midtown International School, news the school was closing came as a shock. It's horrible. The school announced it would permanently close in April, leaving parents with little time to make alternative plans on where their children would finish the school year. But that wasn't the only issue. Parents had already paid thousands of dollars for their students to attend the school. Attorney Shimshon Wexler is representing families affected in a class action lawsuit. He says one parent had already paid more than $16,000 towards tuition for the 2026-2027 school year. They paid for a service that they were not provided. Any other company would be held liable for refunds. The lawsuit says the school's final financial report claimed it only had $18,000 in cash and owed roughly $370,000 to parents. parents. Wexler says he wants to get to the bottom of where the money went. We're going to find out what happened here and we're going to turn over stones. The closure also affected staff. Teachers who signed contracts to work the entire school year say they were also shocked by the news, especially when they learned they would only get paid up to the school's last day. There was no compensation or like, help in that way um hr did help us all guide us through the unemployment process Stephanie Light says the closure quickly became one of the darkest periods of her life and to this day she doesn't understand what happened we were told that there was not enough money to pay us because there was no money when in fact we found out after the fact oh yeah like that tuition was seemingly collected and it wasn't returned to the parents so we're just all left thinking well where'd the money go