First I must tell you that I feel a great deal of guilt for not having worked with my wife Marla when she operated her daycare in San Antonio. I would later learn just how corrupt Childcare Licensing was. We certainly did not expect a State Agency (Childcare Licensing) with the responsibility of ensuring the safety of children to jeopardize the safety of children. Nor did we expect that same State Agency to victimize a person who devoted her entire life to care for children, but that is exactly what occurred when we moved to San Antonio. Marla was pregnant with our 2nd child when she was operating without me. It is a miracle that she did not have a miscarriage as Childcare Licensing put her through an incredible amount of stress. We would not be so fortunate later.
While operating her daycare in San Antonio, Marla had received five visits from a Childcare Licensing Representative named Elizabeth Venecia all within a week and a half of each other. Adrienne Driggers' office refused to provide Marla with the write-ups from those visits, despite the Texas Administrative Code stating that Childcare Licensing must provide the write-ups within 10 days of the inspection. Marla called Ms. Venecia repeatedly asking for them so that she could make corrections but was repeatedly ignored. Marla reported this to Yvette Gutierrez, Ms. Venecia's Supervisor and to Adrienne Driggers. With the presence of myself, Marla, and Yvette Gutierrez, Ms. Venecia admitted to not having provided the write-ups to Marla. Despite not abiding by the Texas Administrative Code, Childcare Licensing did not remove the write-ups. Adrienne Driggers used those same write-ups, which accounted for approximately 75% of Marla's total write-ups, against her in closing her daycare center, stating that Marla had too many repeat write-ups! One thing to consider is that even with the aforementioned write-ups, Marla's daycare still had fewer write-ups than nearly 200 daycare centers in San Antonio alone. It is very likely that there were several hundred if not several thousand daycare centers in the the State of Texas that had more write-ups than Marla's daycare, yet she was the one that was targeted by Adrienne Driggers.
Just prior to Adrienne Driggers closing Marla's daycare, Marla received a visit from a Childcare Licensing Representative named Jessica Nombrana, who repeatedly ordered one of Marla's new employees named Megan Kettler to leave a 2 year old child unattended at a diaper changing table to wipe the nose of another child in the room. Ms. Nombrana could have ordered another staff member (Lisa Cavazos) who was also in the room, but chose not to. Fortunately, Ms. Kettler did not leave the child unattended. Given the experiences that Marla had been having with Childcare Licensing in San Antonio, we incorporated within the staff training for Marla's staff to be vigilant of Childcare Licensing Representatives attempt to create situations that would not only endanger the safety of the children, but would result in the daycare receiving a violation. Had Ms. Kettler done as Ms. Nombrana had ordered, Adrienne Driggers would have been given a reason to close Marla's daycare.
Megan Kettler and Lisa Cavazos were so enraged and disgusted by Jessica Nombrana's actions that they called Adrienne Driggers directly to notify her of Ms. Nombrana actions, but were completely ignored. Not only did Adrienne Driggers not reprimand Jessica Nombrana but she had Ms. Nombrana give classes to potential daycare operators on how to follow the State of Texas Minimum Standards. She had been promoted!
When a person has had their license revoked or denied the District Director must provide written notification to the License Holder of their right to a hearing with the State Office of Administrative Hearings. The State Office of Administrative Hearings (SOAH pronounced: soh uh) is a Court that was created to allow individuals equal footing against State Agencies. Adrienne Driggers withheld this documentation from us.
The District Director must also provide written documentation to the License Holder, notifying them of the period in which they cannot be a License Holder following either a revocation or denial of their license. Adrienne Driggers also withheld this documentation from us. We discovered years later from a Childcare Licensing Representative from a different district that Adrienne Driggers had drawn up a letter stating that Marla could not be a License Holder for a period of 2 years. She stated that the information could be easily obtained by any Childcare Licensing Representative. Adrienne Driggers and some of her subordinates (i.e. Geneva Hudel and Sharon Bolter) stated that Marla could not be a License Holder for 5 years. We still have the email from her office to prove this. Their lie would later force us to move to Oklahoma.
There were horrible ramifications that resulted from the Adrienne Driggers closing the daycare. Not only did the closing result in the children traumatically being forced to relocate to other daycares, but for some, Adrienne Driggers decision was so much worse. To Marla and myself, the daycare meant more than caring for the children, it was a vehicle that we used to help the community. Businesses were suffering , labor hours were being cut and some Parents could not afford childcare. Marla would work with Parents who were having difficulty paying for their children's tuition. After the closing, one particular mother could not afford to take her children elsewhere and was forced to leave her children with a family friend. This family friend had a teenage son, that molested two of the children that had previously been safe at Marla's daycare. Adrienne Driggers had falsely alleged that Marla's daycare posed a threat to the safety and well-being of children and in the process, ended up forcing a situation on a parent that resulted in the molestation of her children.
I decided to open my own daycare after, Marla's daycare had been closed. The rules state that I could have easily taken over as the Director of Marla's daycare to prevent the children from being uprooted or negatively affected. I was perfectly qualified for operating a children's daycare as I had several years of experience, and I had a Bachelors Degree in Management from Texas A&M University. According to Adrienne Driggers, in order for me to open my daycare, Marla had to agree not to fight the closing of her daycare. We believed that Ms. Driggers was referring to an Administrative Review with a DFPS Childcare Licensing Program Specialist named Denise Hall in Austin. Ms. Hall's decision as to whether or not Marla's daycare should have been closed were pending. An Administrative Review is an informal hearing held within the same Childcare Licensing department as the childcare licensing representative whose write-ups you are challenging. Administrative Reviews are notorious for being complete shams, as it is a fellow co-worker of that license representative that decides whether or not the write-ups were justified. As aforementioned, Adrienne Driggers had withheld Marla's right to utilize SOAH, to challenge Adrienne Driggers' decision to close Marla's daycare.
Despite there being a time limit for how long a person could not be a license holder when they have had their license denied or revoked, Adrienne Driggers imposed a permanent stipulation on my license that Marla could not be the Director or be left in charge of the Daycare. She actually had this stipulation printed on my license certificate which was to be seen by any person visiting the daycare. In her interpretation of this stipulation, Adrienne Driggers stated that Marla "could not appear to be more knowledgeable than any of the staff or appear to be a "Go-to" person. If this interpretation sounds bizarre to you it's because it does not exist in the Texas Administrative Code. Adrienne Driggers bypassed the Texas Legislature and the Texas Administrative Code by creating this interpretation for the sole purpose of keeping Marla from being able to work at a daycare. Marla has been working in organized childcare since 1993. Marla started working in daycares when many of the staff were still in diapers. Her age alone gave her the appearance of being more knowledgeable. Not only were we required to post the license, with the stipulation written on it, in a location where it could easily have been seen, but Adrienne Driggers ordered us to notify all of the staff and parents regarding this stipulation. We were being set up for false allegations. Adrienne Driggers' interpretation of the stipulation and notifying all of the parents and staff prompted a District Director in another area to state that not only was her interpretation stupid it was also very dangerous to the safety of the children.
The end of my naïve belief that Childcare Licensing acted in good faith began when Jessica Nombrana ordered one of Marla's employees to leave a child unattended at a diaper changing table. The full realization of the depravity of Adrienne Drigger's Childcare Licensing office came from a visit by a Childcare Licensing Representative named Veronica Lopez. In this visit Ms. Lopez falsified write-ups and stole some of Marla's timesheets to prevent me from being able to prove that Marla was hardly at the daycare. She wrote me up for having Marla run the daycare, even though Marla was only at the daycare in the last 15 minutes of Ms. Lopez 7 1/2 hour visit. I mention the 7 1/2 hours because the average visit for Childcare Licensing Representatives is 1 1/2 hours. She was waiting for Marla to arrive in order to write-up the daycare for having Marla in charge. Marla left the daycare shortly after arriving to pick up children from school. In the administrative review held with a Childcare Licensing Supervisor named Sharon Bolter, I was able to prove without a doubt that the write-ups that I had received from Ms. Lopez were unjustified by making the case to Ms. Bolter that Marla being at the daycare was not a violation of the Minimum Standards as she was not on the Texas DFPS Central Registry for abuse and neglect. I reported the theft of the timesheets to her and to Adrienne Driggers but the write-ups remained. According to the State of Texas Administrative Code, when a person has their license denied or revoked that person can not be a license holder for a period of 5 years. Unless that person is placed on the State of Texas Central Registry for abuse and neglect no state authority can stop a person from working at a children's daycare. Unless they are willing to violate your Constitutional rights.
I began receiving so many "inspections" from licensing without justification that I was forced to report their harassment to State House of Representative Ruth McClendon. Despite having repeated visitations from licensing, my daycare still had very few write-ups. This was a testament to the excellent training that my staff had received. Childcare Licensing's intentions were very clear, given the cross behavior of their representatives.
One of the worst representatives from Adrienne Driggers' Childcare Licensing office was Geneva Hudel, she personified Adrienne Driggers' approach to managing childcare. To meet Adrienne Driggers' ridiculous definition of what constituted a violation of the stipulation on my license of Marla not being allowed to be in charge; Geneva Hudel wrote me up after Marla spoke with a parent regarding a sale at an HEB Plus. The parent was so enraged that Ms. Hudel would falsify that writeup using her and Marla's conversation that she wrote a letter directly to Adrienne Driggers, of which I have a copy, identifying what was truly stated in her conversation with Ms. Hudel. In the letter, the parent also stated how she was enraged that Geneva Hudel attempted to frighten her by stating that she worked with Child Protective Services and was investigating a serious matter at the daycare. The parent was ignored by Ms. Driggers. As previously mentioned, Marla and I had agreed to limit the number of hours that Marla worked at the daycare to a minimum-typically 3 1/2 hours a day to allow for her to pickup children from school. There was simply not enough time for her to have been able to be in charge. We still have the timesheets to prove this.
In her visit, Geneva Hudel had told me that Marla
simply talking to a parent was a violation of a permanent stipulation
that Adrienne Driggers put on my license. She became enraged when I told
her that not allowing Marla to speak with parents would be a violation of her Civil Rights as her interpretation of the stipulation would effectively bar her from working at the daycare. I also informed Ms. Hudel that her interpretation would be a
violation of the State of Texas Minimum Standards as caregivers are required to
communicate with parents to ensure the well-being of the children. I told her that under no circumstances would I have Marla run and hide any time a parent had a question for her regarding the care of their children.
Letter from Randi Pipkin regarding conversations with Marla Gonzales
In addition to Ms. Hudel falsifying information that had been provided to her by parents Ms. Hudel altered the wording of a memo given to the staff, of which I still have, stating what Marla could and could not do at the daycare. This memo came as a result of our fear that the daycare would be exposed to false accusations regarding Marla being in charge. Following the visit from Veronica Lopez, I asked Sharon Bolter, a childcare licensing supervisor, what I could do to protect myself. She suggested that I write a letter to the staff explaining Marla's rights and limitations and stated exactly what the letter should contain. Geneva Hudel in writing up the daycare for Marla being in charge changed the wording of that letter to give the appearance that Marla was being left in charge of the daycare. I have both the memo and Ms. Hudel's altered version of the memo for comparison. Her deceit is obvious.
In this investigation Geneva Hudel allowed a child to run out of my daycare. Ms. Hudel foolishly allowed a hyperactive child to exit the building before
her. As soon as he stepped out of the building he ran towards Rigsby
Ave. Our daycare was approximately 75 yards away from Interstate 410,
one of the busiest intersections in San Antonio!
On a later visit, Geneva Hudel with another Childcare License Representative named Pam Hayes would "follow up" on Ms. Hudel's previous visit and attempt to write-up the daycare for ratios that
were being proposed by the Texas Legislature. Because there were kids absent from daycare that
day they were not successful as the decreased attendance in that particular room put the number of children in care below the proposed ratio. Ms. Hudel and Ms. Hayes
also attempted to write-up the daycare for not having run FBI
fingerprinting for parent volunteers. I reminded them that volunteers were not required by the State of Texas Minimum Standards to be fingerprinted. They grudgingly acquiesced. What happened next typified the lengths at which Adrienne Driggers' office would deny someone of their right to operate a children's daycare. Geneva
Hudel, with Pam Hayes present, ripped a baseboard from the wall then
wrote up the daycare for having a loose baseboard! Their intent for this inspection was blatantly obvious. They were determined to close the daycare.
The scariest thing about Ms. Hudel was how comfortable she was in falsifying write-ups, violating our Constitutional rights and risking her own employment. So reckless was she that she left a paper trail of her misconduct at every turn. She had no fear whatsoever of any ramifications for what she was doing. This made me wonder if she was given the green light to do these things by Adrienne Driggers, the District Director, herself. Given that Ms. Hudel was promptly promoted by Adrienne Driggers after this, tells me that the answer was a very likely "yes".
Adrienne Driggers would use Marla's speaking to a parent regarding the sell at the HEB-Plus to close my daycare despite there being
nearly 200 daycare centers in the San Antonio District alone that had
more write-ups than my daycare. I still have that list. Daycare centers operate under statewide uniform guidelines with uniform punishments. Given that there were nearly 200 daycare centers in San Antonio alone indicates that there could very well have been several thousand daycare centers in Texas that had more write-ups. Strangely enough, only two
out of the 200 license holders that had more write-ups than my
daycare had Spanish surnames. Those two individuals operated
governmental Head Start Programs. This deserves repeating: Adrienne Driggers closed my daycare because my wife spoke to a parent about a sale at an HEB Plus.
We would discover later that Adrienne Driggers closed
my daycare mere weeks before Marla's two years of being unable
to be a license holder expired. Of course, we didn't know it at the time as
Adrienne Driggers had withheld that information from us. As mentioned earlier, we still have the email from her office where she specifically stated that Marla could not be a license holder for 5 years. Adrienne Driggers clearly felt that Marla did not deserve to work with children and she would do anything in her power, legal or otherwise, to ensure that happened.
The time following the closing of the daycare was incredibly difficult. We had to endure the feeling of shock knowing that nothing warranted the closing of the daycare. My family suffered immensely. Obviously we had to deal with the death of our unborn child, the end of our sole source of income, and the end of our lifetime goal of working with children. There was so much more. My wife and I clearly suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. We could not sleep and were constantly in fear that the Department of Family and Protective Services would take our children. Our oldest child, Marco, who was seven years old at the time would hide every time anybody would knock on the door, fearful that Adrienne Driggers was coming to take him and his little brother away. We were living like Jews hiding from Nazi's determined to destroy us. Marco would pray every night that God would protect us from Adrienne Driggers. The fear was real. Our family had been raped by Adrienne Driggers and her staff and there was nobody that we could turn to. As a father it was my duty to protect my family and I could do nothing to stop her. There are no words that can describe or gauge the extent of our pain. This is why I am including this video of the murder of Kelly Thomas a homeless man in Fullerton, California. If you can imagine the hopelessness of his father to see and hear his son getting beaten to death while begging and praying for his father to save him yet being completely unable to do so than you will understand how I felt to see my family getting raped by Adrienne Driggers. Warning: This video is very graphic.
Moving to Ardmore was traumatic for our children. Our oldest child was forced to leave his friends and everything he knew. Our younger child cried for hours every day wanting for us to return to our home in San Antonio. He was too young to understand that our home in San Antonio had become our prison. Our escaping the reach of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services by moving the welcoming arms of Oklahoma was very much like the Jews that escaped Nazi Germany . We had survived but were forced to live in a land that was foreign to us.
It was when we lived in Oklahoma that we discovered through the Corpus Christi Childcare Licensing office that Adrienne Driggers had lied to us about the amount of time in which Marla could not be a license holder. She had told us that Marla could not be a license holder for 5 years when the actual period was 2 years. We also learned that the two year period had expired mere weeks after she closed my daycare.
The nightmare is not over. My mother, who lived in Corpus Christi, was dying so we returned to Corpus Christi. Our hope was that Adrienne Driggers had learned to control her personal animosity towards us after having been overridden by the State Attorney Generals Office by arranging for me to be able to act as a Director in a childcare center. Adrienne Driggers attempted to renege on the Attorney Generals arrangement but was promptly forced to comply by Patricia Fernandez, an attorney with the Attorney Generals office. Perhaps it was the humiliation of literally begging us to return to San Antonio in her attempt to avoid her department losing before SOAH, or the humiliation of being corrected by the Attorney Generals office to her subordinates in Corpus Christi, or perhaps it was simply underestimating our resolve to fight her and a corrupt State agency. Whatever the reason, Adrienne Driggers unfettered hatred would strike again. This time, were prepared.
Please take the time to read and sign the following petition from Change.org. We would greatly appreciate your sponsoring the petition. You can sponsor the petition directly on change.org. By signing and promoting the petition you will be helping us to save the lives of thousands of children in Texas by putting an end to Adrienne Driggers.
Change.org petition
*** We have the opportunity to make ourselves heard directly to the people with the power to force a change in the way DFPS operates. Please take the time to fill out a Public Input Form on this link: https://www.sunset.texas.gov/input-form. Time is limited as we have only until 6/30/2014 to submit these forms. Please demand that the Sunset Advisory Commission do something about the corruption in the Department of Family and Protective Services and reference this blog (http://darksideofchildcare.blogspot.com/). You have the power to rock a corrupt State Agency to it's core. With your assistance you can help us protect the lives of tens of thousands of children that attend daycare in Texas. ***
*** We have the opportunity to make ourselves heard directly to the people with the power to force a change in the way DFPS operates. Please take the time to fill out a Public Input Form on this link: https://www.sunset.texas.gov/input-form. Time is limited as we have only until 6/30/2014 to submit these forms. Please demand that the Sunset Advisory Commission do something about the corruption in the Department of Family and Protective Services and reference this blog (http://darksideofchildcare.blogspot.com/). You have the power to rock a corrupt State Agency to it's core. With your assistance you can help us protect the lives of tens of thousands of children that attend daycare in Texas. ***
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