Training at Kiddie Care, our daycare, was intense. While the State requires all new employees with less than six months of experience to undergo Pre-service training. We required all of our staff, regardless of how much experience they had, to undergo pre-service training which included: studying all of the required pre-service training topics as mandated by the State of Texas Minimum Standards for Childcare Centers and preparing our staff for the day to day operations included real life situations and the best ways to handle them. This part of the training is not only not required by the State of Texas but it is not even addressed by the State of Texas.
Though it was not mandated by the State of Texas, all of our staff were required to take tests to prove their level of understanding of the State of Texas Minimum Standards for Childcare Centers and best methods of handling situations. If the potential employee did not pass the test they were not hired.
After completing the tests our staff were partnered with an employee, with the oversight of the director, to reinforce the material that they had studied in preparation for the job.
At a bare minimum, our staff obtained at least 40 hours of training by the time they were able to work with a group (The State of Texas requires 24 hours of training). The training, however, did not end there as our staff were observed closely and corrected of any deviation from the training that they had received.
Given the behavior of childcare licensing, we felt it necessary to incorporate within our training the preparation of our staff of the tactics used by childcare licensing representatives in attempting to cause injury to the daycare and the children in our care.
Staff were trained to respond in a courteous manner whenever a childcare licensing representative demanded or ordered them to do something that would be in violation of the State of Texas Minimum Standards. In their training our staff were given real life examples of what to expect from childcare licensing representatives. Role-playing was a useful tool that we used to prepare our staff for childcare licensing.
The greatest example of how this preparation protected the children in our care was when one of Adrienne Driggers' childcare licensing investigators named Jessica Nombrana attempted repeatedly to order one of Marla's employees, Megan Kettler, to leave a child unattended at a diaper changing table. Ms. Kettler had just completed her classroom training and was paired with another staff member named Lisa Cavazos. Because Ms. Kettler had been prepared for childcare licensing representatives use of unethical methods to obtain write-ups for the daycare, she politely refused Ms. Nombrana's orders despite Ms. Nombrana's aggressiveness. Both Ms. Kettler and Ms. Cavazos called Adrienne Driggers directly to complain of Ms. Nombrana's actions but were ignored. Not only was Ms. Nombrana not reprimanded but she was actually promoted to holding classes for prospective daycare operators on how to follow the State of Texas Minimum Standards!
Another example came from a childcare licensing representative named Elizabeth Venecia who attempted to pull a staff member out of the infant room leaving the room out of ratio. The staff member that she was attempting to pull out of the room politely refused by notifying Ms. Venecia that she could not leave the room as it would leave the room out of ratio. Ms. Venecia acquiesced.
One of the most difficult things for childcare operators is when a childcare licensing representative creates and enforces their own rules. For instance, in Corpus Christi, we had a Childcare Licensing Representative named Christina Cantu that wanted us to rip out the carpet and padding because it was the same carpet that was there when she had visited the location when it was operated by a different daycare. I told her that the Corpus Christi Health Department had visited the daycare the day before her visit and were perfectly fine with the carpet. In fact, we received a perfect score by the Health Department. I told Ms. Cantu that removing the carpet and padding would create serious injuries to the children as they would be forced to play and nap on exposed concrete. She wrote up the daycare for us having the carpet but did it in such a way that it does not reflect her true reasoning. We do have witnesses that overheard her. Because I called her supervisor, Sylvia Fuentes, to state our concerns about the safety of the children if we removed the carpet, we received a letter from the Corpus Christi Director stating that they had investigated the matter and made corrections. We succeeded in protecting the children.
Training your staff is paramount to ensuring the safety of the children in your care even if it means protecting them from childcare licensing. Unfortunately, it cannot save you or your daycare if the childcare licensing representative is dead-set on finding fault in your daycare or from childcare licensing representatives falsifying write-ups. I strongly recommend that you also install hidden cameras that also capture sound because if you report the Childcare Licensing Representative for misconduct, that representative will simply deny the misconduct and that representative will have the full support from their co-workers and superiors. Childcare Licensing will uphold the write-up unless you have video to prove your case and are willing to go public with it.
We have had our fair share of crooked Childcare Licensing Representatives. We had one in San Antonio named Geneva Hudel that ripped a baseboard off the wall then wrote us up for having a loose baseboard. Ms. Hudel also used a conversation that a parent and Marla had regarding a sale at an HEB Plus to write us up for a violation that does not exist in the Texas Administrative Code but was created by Adrienne Driggers, Ms. Hudel's Supervisor and District Director for West and South Texas. In Corpus Christi we had a Childcare Licensing Representative named Monica Martinez that wrote us up for not having trained the staff despite the testimony from the staff and documentation indicating otherwise.
Here is a video of a Childcare Licensing Representative attempting to falsify a write-up. Tactics like the one seen in this video are commonly used by Childcare Licensing Representatives.
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. 
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