I'm writing to you as a final act of desperation in resolving a complaint I lodged concerning how the State of Florida uses Federal money.
I was in the Operation Paycheck program which was instituted following the Sept 11th attacks. The money was supposed to go toward retraining the workforce for new vocations. Unfortunately, I uncovered numerous blatant acts of corruption on behalf of the schools designated to retrain us. I lodged several complaints with the Workforce Alliance Center in Riviera Beach Florida and even contacted Tallahassee several times. For my efforts, I was removed from the MCSE program at the PC Professor in Boca Raton. The PC Professor was receiving thousands of dollars per student for the MCSE course, but delivering little in return.
The reason I chose that school was the package offered, the amount of class hours allegedly being taught, and recommendations from government employees. However, it appears the MCSE program being instructed by the Kumar family was misadvertised. One of the selling points made by the office manager Guy DiPastino, was that Suneel was being paid $400,000 per year and has a 100% pass ratio. Suneel was also in charge of job placement, but I never heard of anyone being approached about employment opportunities.
I talked to several students who told me they were encouraged to enroll at PC Professor in Boca Raton by their counselors at Workforce Alliance Centers in both Broward and Palm Beach Counties. One student from Broward told me his counselor had bragged of helping in the enrollment of over 30 students in PC Professors MCSE program. I find this troubling because there are other schools that offer these programs. Common sense dictates that when the State of Florida is billed thousands of dollars per student, there is incentive for biased recommendations.
The MCSE course being taught by the Kumar family was severely mismanaged. PC Professor advertised the fact that they are going above and beyond the required class hour recommendations set forth by Microsoft, unfortunately that was not what I observed. The fact is, over 40 HOURS were taken away from my training on the first of seven MCSE courses because of cancellations or crafty scheduling. This did not seem to bother, nor surprise the manager Guy Depastino.
However, this was extremely troubling to me because of conversations I had with Virginia Pittman and Carol Learner at the Workforce Alliance Center in Delray and Leslie Rigg in Riviera Beach. They stated the amount of students passing the seven MCSE certification tests was almost non-existent. Connie Devine a contract specialist at the Riviera Beach office told me the same and provided me with a document to that effect. To make matters worse, if you failed any test, the make up test cost over $100 and was to be paid by the student.
I felt I was unjustly treated and cheated out of an opportunity to advance my education. Furthermore, I was singled out and removed from the program with the consent of government employees whom I felt had ulterior motives.
0 comments