(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Detroit at Work was designed to avoid scrutiny, oversight, accountability [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-09-25 “Your job search starts here,” proclaim the billboards for Detroit at Work. Supposedly, Detroit at Work helps Detroiters get on their way to “well-paying” careers. For the people who have fallen through the cracks of Detroit at Work, those billboards add insult to injury. The mystery of the Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Foundation’s $2 million grant to help train Detroiters for software developer jobs remains a mystery. In December 2016, the foundation announced a $2 million grant to the City of Detroit, Detroit at Work, Southwest Solutions and Grand Circus for the TechHire program. Stephanie Shenouda for DBusiness: The Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Foundation has donated $2 million to support the TechHire program, a four-year initiative that will provide IT training to hundreds of Detroiters. The grant will be combined with federal and private workforce funding to provide a variety of IT training and apprenticeships that are designed to help Detroiters at multiple skill levels enter into IT careers. The initiative will be overseen by Detroit’s Workforce Development Board and the region’s IT employers. Nonprofit organizations contributing to the program will include Detroit Employment Solutions Corp., Southwest Solutions, Focus:HOPE, and … Grand Circus. Grand Circus is a “coding” “boot camp.” Unlike competitor Tech Elevator, job placement results for Grand Circus are not examined by independent auditors. But Grand Circus graduates do get job placement help, at least the while male ones do. And those consistently find relevant jobs within six months of graduation. Tuition at Grand Circus today starts at $14,750. I don’t remember how much it was back in 2017. Let’s guesstimate $10,000 even. That would mean the $2 million grant could have helped two hundred Detroiters, give or take. Now that 2020 has come and gone, no one can answer the question: Did the $2 million grant help anyone? Councilwoman Gabriela Santiago-Romero, the cardboard cutout representing Detroit’s City Council District 6, used to be the so-called “diversity coordinator” at Grand Circus. “Status quo assurance officer” would have been a more accurate job title for her. Ask her about the $2 million grant and she just dodges the question. I want answers, damn it. I tried a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with eight “bullet points” that I thought were targeted enough to produce the information I’m seeking. Detroit’s Law Department gave themselves an extension, as allowed by the law, and still blew past their own deadline by three weeks. I finally got a response last week. That portion of your request set forth in the eight bullet points is denied pursuant to MCL 15.235(5)(b), for the reason that Detroit at Work is a separate entity from the City of Detroit and is, for that reason, an entity we do not represent. Convenient, huh? There’s no way for the public to scrutinize Detroit at Work. Without scrutiny, what hope is there for oversight and accountability? And if you ask Mayor Mike Duggan (D-Detroit but technically nonpartisan) about Detroit at Work, he’ll tell you something like that, about Detroit at Work being a separate entity he has no control over whatsoever. That is, if he doesn’t dodge the question or pretend he can’t hear you. Rumors are flying that Duggan intends to run for governor of Michigan. Then he’d be like Gov. Hazen Pingree (R-Michigan, 1897 — 1900). At least Duggan would have enough sense not to try to be both mayor of Detroit and governor of Michigan at the same time. Still, I wouldn’t vote for Duggan in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. It doesn’t matter that he has failed to deliver on most of his promises to Detroiters, he knows the reporters will just take what he tells them without questioning any of it. And so, like the torn canopy at the Rosa Parks Transit Center that was damaged two months ago, the problems at Detroit at Work remain unaddressed. What does this do to the families of people whom Detroit at Work has failed? If you have a relative who turned to Detroit at Work for help five, ten years ago and still hasn’t been able to get into a proper career, you’d blame him or her. Your relative is lazy and unmotivated, doesn’t listen to the people trying to help him or her. And if they dare complain about Detroit at Work, they’re just shifting blame. I know a woman, call her “Aesha.” Back in 2017, Aesha turned to Detroit at Work for help. They sent her to apply to Grand Circus, where she was rejected. Not for any legitimate reason, something about her asking too many questions about the hiring partners at her interview, if they even bothered to come up with an official excuse. Detroit at Work found Aesha an alternate school for Java programming, call it “School Tech Digital” (STD). Now, Aesha has no particular talent or inclination for Java. But she could have learned and become quite decent at it, if only she had been given the opportunities that would have been given to her if she was a white man instead of a black woman. A white man decides he wants to become a software developer, and all the doors are opened for him to do that: he gets the training quite easily, gets hired in a relevant job in a couple of months after graduation, and after a couple of years realizes he’d much rather be a professional skateboarder or something like that. At School Tech Digital, Aesha was taught by “Rufus,” one of the extremely few black graduates of Grand Circus. Rufus does know Java, more or less, but he had no clue how to teach it. After a month, STD dismissed Rufus and replaced him with a teacher who taught JavaScript instead of Java (the difference between Java and JavaScript is well documented in many places). The new teacher was good, but no miracle worker. Officially, Aesha graduated, but she would’ve needed a lot more training to become a productive front end or full stack developer. The bills were piling up for her and she couldn’t wait around for Detroit at Work to put her through more training. After much heartbreak and many recriminations from her family, Aesha, with no help whatsoever from Detroit at Work, found a training program for truck driver school. Eventually she became a truck driver for Amazon, and last I talked to her she was transitioning to a related career in transportation. It was a few months ago that I talked to her on the phone. She was surprised to learn that School Tech Digital is still around. As for Detroit at Work and the City of Detroit, she says “they just there to take the money.” Her words, not mine. Detroit at Work does have programs for truck drivers. They might actually be good programs. But for whatever reason, they just couldn’t get Aesha into one of those, she had to find the program herself and figure out how to get into it. Have Detroit at Work’s truck driver programs helped anyone get jobs as truck drivers? I don’t know. My guess is the number is a tiny percentage of the number of people who have inquired about the truck driver program. Those numbers are probably just as impervious to scrutiny. It is possible to solve these problems and make money at the same time. I have a very rough draft of a business plan. But no one cares. 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