January 20, 2006: We have
not been approved by the PSRB as a training course
for Process Servers. Here's why:
On July 1, 2005, PS-Academy
filed an application for approval of our online training
courses with the newly formed Texas Process Service Review
Board. The Board held its first meeting August
12th, at which time they agreed to review our online course
to see if it met the requirements the Supreme Court established
under Sec. 7 of Misc. Docket #05-9122.
Two Board members volunteered to review our course on behalf
of the entire Board. Only one of them actually reviewed
our entire course, and that was done only a week before
the subsequent meeting held on October 28th (read
the minutes of the August meeting)
At the October 28nd meeting, those two
members were asked to comment on their findings to the entire
Board (the minutes of that meeting have not yet been posted).
They said there were issues that needed to be addressed
before the Board should recommend it for approval:
1) one person said that a couple of things
in the course content needed to be revised. The other person
said he couldn't properly review the course because it wasn't
a paper hard-copy, and, although he had actually assigned
someone else in his office to review it for him, he found
it hard to flip back and forth online to see everything
that the course contained, and couldn't recommend it until
he received a hard copy;
2) both members questioned whether online
courses could be properly monitored as required under the
Order, an argument that was echoed by a couple of other
Board members during discussion;
3) one person took exception to the fact
that the course is offered online at all, saying he believed
that such a certification course could only be taught in
person at a live seminar. A couple of the other Board members
voiced similar concerns.
As a result, the PSRB voted to table further
review of our course until PS-Academy provided each member
of the PSRB with a hard-copy of our entire course and our
testing material.
We sent 10 bound copies of our entire course
to the Board for review. Because we believed our material
to be proprietary in nature, each copy was bound in shrink-wrapping,
with a caveat for the reviewer. Our caveat was very similar
to that which accompanies any media produced in this country,
including the software and computer operating systems used
by the Supreme Court, and simply asked the reviewer to abide
by copyright laws before reviewing our material.
Two members were absent from the January
20th meeting, and two other members of the Board took exception
to that caveat, finding it so insulting that they refused
to even open the wrapper to review our course. Of the remaining
members who did review our course, we received two written
critiques with recommendations, and several comments.
The Board voted to table further review
of our course until additional changes were made to the
course content, and pending its review of whether an online
course could be a venue for such Certification.
We are now in the process of addressing
those issues, and will resubmit our application for the
April meeting.
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