x-sender: governor.haley@sc.lmhostediq.com x-receiver: governor.haley@sc.lmhostediq.com Received: from mail pickup service by sc.lmhostediq.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC; Tue, 25 Oct 2016 09:36:42 -0400 thread-index: AdIuxNJjXAI84ypmT72rGzN6BcJapQ== Thread-Topic: Response via eform 100002 - Help with a State Agency From: To: Subject: Response via eform 100002 - Help with a State Agency Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2016 09:36:42 -0400 Message-ID: <595BB8920A184F9E9B2B0CB29FECA21D@IQ12> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Microsoft CDO for Windows 2000 Content-Class: urn:content-classes:message Importance: normal Priority: normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.1.7601.17609 X-OriginalArrivalTime: 25 Oct 2016 13:36:42.0740 (UTC) FILETIME=[D2827B40:01D22EC4] WORKFLOW 344 Mr. Geoffrey Skipton Owner of The Super Cool Homework Shop, LLC After School Program 1110 Park West Blvd, STE A4 Mount Pleasant SC 29466 geoffrey.skipton@gmail.com 843-388-7780 Good Morning, I am a small business owner located in Mount Pleasant, SC. We are going out of business due to extreme corruption and incompetence in the daycare licensing and DSS office. We have worked for three years to become certified, spent thousands of dollars, and bent over backwards to satisfy the ever changing requirements. We were recently told that we were getting our license hand delivered due to our patience. Instead, DSS showed up at our door step and berated my wife (she runs the facility), accused us of lying, made racist comments, then presented an unverified email (which was fraudulent and the subject of an ongoing police investigation: contact Mt. Pleasant police for more information) that our director was not going to stick around disqualifying us from certification. At this point in time, my wife (runs our business) contacts DSS almost daily and receives no response. The office of DSS is deliberately preventing our licensing in order to put us out of business. They have stated that we've completed all requirements, yet don't respond. I have absolutely no confidence that this message will result in any action. Please prove me wrong. I am disappointed in the state of South Carolina for allowing such behavior. I am especially disappointed as this is going on and negatively affects the children's safety. Perhaps I should have just slipped the local DSS agent a few hundreds and called it a day? We are closing in the next few weeks and are reviewing with our attorney what civil action we can take against the state to recuperate our investment. The following is a letter that I sent to Leigh Bolick that has received no response. Perhaps this was the wrong person to send it to. I am sickened to be a South Carolinian. LETTER SENT on Oct 11: TITLE: Super Cool Homework Shop - DSS Bullying / Mistreatment (I cannot dream this stuff up) Greetings, I hope this email finds you well. I am the co-owner of The Super Cool Homework Shop, LLC. I'd like to shed light on the non supportive and unprofessional treatment that we have received over the past few years by DSS. Firstly, we started our business three years ago. We decided to start an after-school program in Mount Pleasant that focused on homework and continued education. The idea was to provide a service to the hard working families of the community. Our goal was (and is) to work with students to complete their school work before they get home. This provides maximum "family time". This is an asset to the community. In order to afford space in expensive Mount Pleasant, we also need to run exempt short term "drop in care" during the day. This is another service that was lacking in the community. We kept in close contact with DSS through the entire process. We were told that as long as no child was at the facility more than the "exempt maximum", we could have the different programs. We were told that a single child could not be in more than one program. We were also told to go ahead and "work towards" certification as it would alleviate all other restrictions. Since then we have spent thousands of dollars on our facility and readied it for certification (and passed). We worked through all of the other regulations including student and employee files, building readiness, and staff. We actually received a verbal confirmation as of about a month ago that we have our certification and that it is "in the mail". A few weeks ago there was a staffing change in the local office of DSS. Since then we encountered what can only be described as an effort to have us shut down. DSS showed up on our doorstep a couple of weeks ago. Here are some high level bullets of the visit: - We were told by DSS that they were coming to "hand deliver" our license around 11 (I think) as we have worked so hard on it - They showed up much earlier with no announcement - They spent the next hour or two bur-rating my wife (Amberley - she runs the facility) - They accused Amberley of lying about all of the direction that we have received from DSS - Our assistant had to take her child out of the building because the DSS staff was behaving is such a way that children could not be present - Our assistant had her grandchild there (grandchild is mixed (darker skin) and our assistant is white) and they repeatedly accused us of lying that the child was related to her - Amberley broke down crying and called me - I told her to call the police, but she took the beating instead. - Amberley was presented with the information that our director sent a letter stating that she did not want to direct our facility - Due to the letter above, DSS staff said that our license did not go through - The letter, which turned out to be an email from an unconfirmed source, was fraudulent and is now the subject of a criminal investigation by the Mount Pleasant police department (contact investigator Caitlyn for more information) - We were told to discontinue our morning transport for our after school program as it was a different program (yet another interpretation) Since we opened we have been stripped of all activity other than afternoon care for children. We have been denied a simple certification. This has basically cost us our business. At this point DSS will not respond to any of our emails or questions! This is a complete joke. Amberley had a meeting with our mayor to discuss the harassment and issues. She needs to reschedule due to the storm. We intend to make as loud a noise as possible. We have kept quiet as we want to work with DSS as a team. I intentionally left names out of the email. I do want to mention that Bob has generally been professional and tries to be helpful. Others have not been so helpful (or useful in general). About me, I currently work for Boeing. Before Boeing, I worked as a consultant and worked with many fortune 500 companies and government organizations (including the IRS). I only mention this because I have never run into such an experience as we have had with the SC DSS. Thank your for your time and I hope that you can help. 130.76.96.149