Exclusive: CDL students say state-approved program didn't provide proper training hours

Some students at a private career school in Hartford County spent weeks studying to get their commercial driver’s licenses to drive an 18-wheeler.

But they tell NBC CT Responds that the state-approved school didn’t even have a truck suitable for proper training.

Fresh Start Technical School in Hartford is approved by the state’s Office of Higher Education, and it gets federal funding.

So, three locals we spoke to were initially thrilled when they were told their tuition wouldn’t cost them a penny.

“A free program that leads to a six-figure income, it’s a no-brainer, you know,” Mike Ericson, of Bloomfield, said.

But looking back, the program was a waste of time. And for a single mom like Tori Mitchell, of Hartford, time is money.

“I’m working to make ends meet, penny-pinching, I’m like, you know what I need? A new opportunity, so I signed up for the course,” Mitchell said.

She and her two former classmates could be making money on the road right now as CDL truck drivers. But instead, they met NBC CT Responds at the parking lot of the Apple Cinemas in Hartford.

It's the parking lot where they say Fresh Start Technical School taught them some driving maneuvers, but never provided them with the necessary hours on the road to take and pass a commercial driver’s license test.

Despite this, they say the school signed each of them up for the Department of Motor Vehicle CDL license test.

“Two-and-a-half hours before my test time, I got a call from the instructor that the school had insufficient insurance to rent the vehicle to test in and at that point, my classmate and I, we told him, ‘Like, we haven’t had any road time,''” Ericson said.

Days later, they say they got an email from the school’s owner, Whitney Stewart, that it was going to “pause/shut down” the course.

In one follow-up email, the company owner wrote, “We were blindsided to the fact that students did not have the road time,” which she also wrote prompted an investigation and led to the firing of an instructor.

“All these things should have been known by the school,” Ericson said.

“There was at least 15 people in my class that now have no opportunity to take advantage of all the time they put in and the effort,” former student Courtney Dunstan, of Hartford, said.

To make matters even stranger, the school even held the students’ graduation in December, before the training truck ever left the cinema parking lot.

“None of us felt right for participating in graduation. You know what I mean? Like none of us did,” Ericson said, adding, we were “going through the motions, like, ‘I guess this is what we’re supposed to do’ and talking to the teachers like, ‘We still have training time after this?’ They’re like, ‘Yeah.’ Then why are we graduating then?”

We’ve reached out to Fresh Start Technical School’s owner multiple times for comment but haven’t heard back.

The school offers medical training, too.

“I didn’t have anybody else to speak higher up for me, so I’m like what place better than NBC Connecticut?” Mitchell said.

She said she reached out to NBC CT Responds because, “Nobody else should have to go through this.”

We reached out to the Federal Motor Safety Carrier Safety Administration, which helps with the regulation of truck driver training, for comment.

As of the new year, it now considers a truck registered to Fresh Start as “out of service.”

And yet, the school’s Instagram still has posts promoting its next CDL course in February.

“I think there should be some accountability. I took eight weeks out of my life,” Dunstan said.

These three are now searching for other ways to complete their training so they can finally hit the road and get paid for their hard work.

“It’s the difference between right and wrong,” Ericson said.

“I had to stand in Christmas lines for my daughter to get Christmas gifts that I usually can afford, and I fell behind in bills that I usually am up to date on and it’s a mess,” Mitchell said.

NBC CT Responds asked the state’s Office of Higher Education, which accredits this course, a lot of questions.

It would only tell us that it’s aware the CDL program is not currently active, and these students should submit their complaints through its website since the Office of Higher Education has not received any complaints about the school.

Connecticut’s Office of the Attorney General has received two complaints and said it has forwarded them to the Office of Higher Education.