Photo credit: F. Brian Ferguson, Gazette-Mail. Mined Minds, a software development training nonprofit, has an office at the old Clendenin Middle School. The office’s build-out was funded by the Kanawha County Commission. Despite a recent lawsuit filed against Mined Minds, Commission President Kent Carper says the relationship between the county and the nonprofit will not change.
By: Max Garland, Staff Writer and Business Reporter
Posted: Dec. 24, 2017 | Source: WV Gazette-Mail
West Virginia officials remain supportive of Mined Minds, despite the nonprofit being named in a class-action lawsuit by former participants and shuttering its Pennsylvania operations.
Mined Minds, which has an office at the old Clendenin Middle School, trains people in areas affected by the coal decline in coding and software development.
Participants take a free 32-week course. Graduates are offered a “competency-based” apprenticeship, working on projects for Mined Minds clients, that can last up to 64 weeks with “regular pay increases on meeting learning milestones,” per a Mined Minds document.
Mined Minds, founded in Pennsylvania, says it’s helping coalfield communities transition to a more economically sound future in coding. But the lawsuit, filed in Raleigh County Circuit Court on Dec. 6, is seeking damages from Mined Minds for what some former participants claim were false promises about wages and job prospects.
Victoria Frame, a Clay County resident who participated in the Mined Minds program starting in June, said in the lawsuit she was promised pay for her time in the training and apprenticeship phases of the program but never received it.
The program “did not sufficiently prepare [Frame] for a job in the tech field,” despite Mined Minds saying the training was “as good as or better than a college education,” it said.
Co-founder Amanda Laucher said there is “absolutely no substance” to the lawsuit’s claims. She said 100 percent of program graduates have had job offers when including Mined Minds. As for claims that the training portion of the program promised pay, she said the plaintiffs gave written confirmation acknowledging there would be no payment during training.
The lawsuit said Frame exited the program in November after news broke of Mined Minds ending their Pennsylvania classes. Pittsburgh news station KDKA-TV reported the nonprofit ended the classes following a cease and desist letter from the state’s Department of Education. The department asked for Mined Minds to be licensed as a school.
Laucher said a private school license is required in Pennsylvania for any entity providing training for skills that could lead to employment. Mined Minds declined to apply for licensure for training due to cost.
Mined Minds confirmed with West Virginia’s education department that it wasn’t at risk of violating any state rules, Laucher said.
“They’re happy where we stand,” she said. “They have not and will not ask us for a license.”
Despite these recent events, Mined Minds doesn’t plan to stop its training and apprenticeship program any time soon, Laucher said. Currently, Mined Minds is wrapping up its second graduating class in the state, which is expected to have eight graduates total, she said.
“We’re definitely planning to expand,” she said. “As we’re building in West Virginia, we’re learning the ropes of what works best for people.”
Activity in West Virginia
Those who have interacted with Mined Minds since its arrival in West Virginia last year don’t seem opposed to Mined Minds’ planned expansion.
U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., pushed the Pennsylvania-based company to expand to West Virginia in the first place. A news release from Manchin’s office said he was “instrumental” in bringing Mined Minds to the Mountain State, inviting Laucher and co-founder Jonathan Graham to a job fair he hosted in Logan.
Manchin defended Mined Minds in an interview. He said the program has brought job opportunities to an economically depressed region.
“When someone’s giving you something for free, how can you say they scammed you?” he said of the lawsuit’s claims.
Manchin said although he didn’t read the lawsuit, he reached out to Mined Minds about it to see if there were any concerns.
“I talked to Jonathan [Graham] a little bit and he feels very comfortable that we crossed all the Ts and dotted all the Is,” he said. “They didn’t make promises they couldn’t fulfill.”
The Kanawha County Commission funded the development of Mined Minds’ Clendenin office, where West Virginia graduates work as apprentices.
The commission voted in February to spend up to $40,000 on the office build-out in addition to $900 a month for rent for two years, the Gazette-Mail previously reported.
Commission President Kent Carper said the build-out was “modestly done” to make the space functional. The building is already owned by nonprofit group 25045 — A New Clendenin. So even if Mined Minds’ time there is cut short, the space would still be able to be used by another entity, Carper said.
Mined Minds has been performing in Clendenin “at the level they had promised,” Carper added. Despite ending its Pennsylvania classes, the relationship between the county and Mined Minds will not change, he said.
“There wasn’t exactly a line forming around the block to help the people of Clendenin,” Carper said. “Even knowing what I know now, I would’ve made the same decision.”
Mined Minds has also been teaching software development classes at the West Virginia National Guard’s Mountaineer ChalleNGe Academy. The academy purchased two 120-hour classes from Mined Minds costing $24,800 each, documents obtained by the Gazette-Mail show.
In a statement, Maj. Gen. James A. Hoyer, adjutant general for the West Virginia National Guard, said the WVNG’s relationship with Mined Minds “has been productive and successful and that it does not “forsee any changes” in that relationship despite the lawsuit.
Mined Minds has also had apprenticeship pay reimbursed through the Charleston-based Human Resource Development Foundation, a nonprofit workforce rehabilitation arm of the West Virginia AFL-CIO.
The HRDF reimbursed the pay with a portion of a National Dislocated Worker Grant it received from WorkForce West Virginia, said HRDF deputy director Amanda Filippelli. The grant was for HRDF’s “Job Driven On-the-Job Training Program,” which reimburses employers to hire and train dislocated workers.
There were six Mined Minds employees who had a portion of their wages reimbursed through the program, according to Filipelli. She said she didn’t know the total reimbursed to Mined Minds, but that it could’ve been up to 90 percent of those employees’ wages.
Filipelli said it seems like Mined Minds has good intentions, even with recent issues.
“I don’t know enough about the situation, but it sounds like it’s unfortunate,” Filipelli said of Mined Minds. “If some [participants] are back to job-seeking status, we have other programs we could help them with. We hate to hear when anyone feels they are treated unfairly.”
Completing training
Only seven of the 20 students who started an Allegheny County, Pennsylvania-based bootcamp with Mined Minds graduated, and six of those graduates “were quickly let go,” according to KDKA-TV’s report. That camp was funded with a $71,000 grant from the state Department of Labor and Industry, the report said.
Mined Minds’ first West Virginia coding class, hosted at BridgeValley Community and Technical College, began with around 21 students, Laucher said.
Ten ended up graduating that inaugural class, eight taking part in a graduation ceremony, while two others from the class graduated later, she said.
Laucher said people dropped out of the class “for all sorts of reasons,” a primary one being the lack of pay during the class training portion of the program.
“Software development is not easy, and it’s not for everyone,” she said. “Not everyone who starts will be able to finish.”
Four from the first West Virginia class remain with the company. Three are working elsewhere, two were let go for “policy violations” and one left, Laucher said.
The one that left is Cyndi Bolton, who spent much of her career repairing computer hardware. Bolton, 61, resigned from the apprenticeship with Mined Minds in May and moved to Florida in July, where she is now retired.
Bolton signed up for Mined Minds because she wanted to improve her skills in coding and software, but the program was not what she expected.
According to Bolton, experience varied wildly between participants, with one woman struggling to even turn on a computer. The bulk of training had students spending hours outside the class honing their skills in “Ruby” — a general-purpose programming language, she said. Laucher said Mined Minds teaches Ruby and a variety of other languages including HTML, Javascript and SQL.
Bolton left behind a work environment she summed up as “very negative,” with a fear among apprentices of being fired, she said.
“I didn’t feel like I was going to be able to get a job,” said Bolton of the program. “I did not see there was a future for me.”
Reach Max Garland at
max.garland@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-4886 or follow
@MaxGarlandTypes on Twitter.
