Former Lon Morris Employees to Get Unpaid Wages Thanks to Donations

JACKSONVILLE — Officials say charitable donations will cover unpaid wages for ex-employees of defunct Lon Morris College. KETK says the announcement came in a news release. A few years ago, employees of the Jacksonville school began to see delays in their paychecks. After months of questions and confusion about the future of the school, most of the employees were notified of their ultimate termination by email in May of 2012. Lon Morris finally filed for bankruptcy later that summer.

There were many remaining questions as to the future of the campus, and in February of 2013, the majority of the school’s property was sold to Jacksonville ISD in auction for $1,530,000. Now, several months later, the group managing the bankruptcy case for Lon Morris says the terminated employees are finally going to be receiving their back pay.

Bridgepoint Consulting’s news release says, in part, “This week former employees of Lon Morris College will receive payments generally equivalent to their prior unpaid wages as the result of charitable distributions being made by Heartspring Methodist Foundation and Texas Methodist Foundation, totaling $500,000. The 158-year-old Methodist college, Texas’ oldest junior college, filed for bankruptcy protection last summer amidst a liquidity crisis so severe the employees had missed 3 payrolls. The employees continued to work without pay so that students could complete their spring semester, in furtherance of the school’s mission.

“Prior distributions were also made during the bankruptcy case. The Texas Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church organized a humanitarian appeal that generated enough funds to cover one of the missed payrolls. A Tennessee foundation also made a distribution towards the unpaid wages during the prior Christmas season. This final distribution from the two foundations was delayed due to matters pending with the office of the Texas Attorney General. Lon Morris will continue to liquidate claims, sell assets and collect on insurance policies that should produce several million dollars to make payments to other unsecured creditors over time.”