Re: Do Non-School Teams Have An Advantage?
 

Quite the contrary, I would say it's much easier to be affiliated with a school than not. While our team is part of a school, the school isn't a traditional high school but a center for half-day technical programs for high school juniors and seniors, as a result, we're in a kind of limbo in between a school team and a community team.

The downside of our school is that recruiting team members can be extremely difficult because none of the students that attend have any "school spirit/loyalty" for our school, but instead for their home schools. In the past we've recruited from other local high schools (most of which also send some students to our school for classes), but in recent years the growth of teams in FiM means that most of those schools now have their own teams, further limiting our options.

That said, on the plus side, we get a full machine shop workspace and class area that we have unrestricted access to and covers all of the maintenance or utility costs. We also have the coverage of the schools liability insurance for team events, and discounts on van rentals; permission slips are required but don't cause any real issues. We used to have problems with funding availability (had to wait 6+ weeks between requesting funds from the school account and receiving them, even though all the money came directly from our sponsors, not the school), but we solved that issue by being one of the founding teams of an area FRC 501c3 non-profit so we now have our own debit card and can buy things whenever we need to.

That said though, having access to resources is nice, but meaningless if you don't have any students on the team to use them.

Re: Do Non-School Teams Have An Advantage?
 

For 3476, we have always been a community based team and we find it a huge advantage for us.

We don't limit ourselves to having kids from one school but rather schools and homeschools all over our county. Increasing people in our program, diversity, and knowledge base. I think we are around to 22 schools now.

We also enjoy not being a school team for funding sake. While we did have to apply for 501c3 status as our own entity, it opened us up to larger sponsorship that schools could not moderate. We could choose to accept or decline any sponsorship from any company we wish. Sponsorship is also easier for us to get because schools tend to fight for funding for different programs within their school, we are our own thing.

We also enjoy the fact that we make our own time. We meet earlier than most schools let out because our homeschool kids are available and once that dies down our public school kids take the reigns. Because of this our parents and mentors can have flexible hours.

Being a community based team also gave us closer ties with our community, since we are community based many schools hear about us and flock to us. We make it a point to do a lot of outreach around the community and I personally did less as a school team due to our limited amount of students we could take in (we could only take from our school).

Community teams also offer a larger mentor range since people are coming from schools all over! More people hear about the program and want to help out

The downsides to a community team:
A facility to work in is never a guarantee
Having teachers approve time off for competitions (most are super supportive)

Personally, I was on a school ran team when I was a student and there were so many restrictions that I've never had to deal with as a community team. Being a community team is hard work, it requires a huge push at the start, but I do think it's worth the payoff of in a way "being your own boss"

Re: Do Non-School Teams Have An Advantage?
 

This is not the case for all school teams, and I can say that not being affiliated with a school is a DEFINITE advantage for us. Some teams work better being affiliated with a school, and that's great. Others wouldn't be able to work in the school. One situation isn't applicable to everyone. For example, we definitely wouldn't be able to meet on snow days based on our school board rules. It's great that your school allows you to. For many others, it's a different story.

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Let me lay out the pros and cons that MARS has experienced, being not affiliated with the school, but sponsored by the board of education (based out of a university), based on the rules of our school district. We are a community team that is comprised primarily of two rival cross-town rival high schools, and several other students. Some of these pros and cons that apply to us might not necessarily apply to others due to differing school districts. There was a team before us that was based out of the school that was never successful, and folded because the school didn't provide any facilities or money or really any support at all.

Pros:
We can accept any student from any county/school.
We can meet anytime/anywhere we want
We can travel using any method (usually we carpool, and we dabbled with a flying option this year)
School board gives us a practice field and a hefty monetary donation each year, but we are not bound by their rules, and the students still get absence exemptions
We don't have to worry about having a teacher involved with the team every year
We can do all kinds of official team events around town and around the state utilizing a carpool (carpools with adults to any official away event is prohibited for school organizations in our county. We would need a bus for everything)

Cons:
We have to organize our own transportation (also a pro because we have leeway, but it's not free like it is for some school teams)
Need our own insurance (completely do-able)

Again, this is for us. Depending on the team and the school, these may look way different for others. Some of our "pros" could be "cons" for other teams, or may not even apply to all.

The moral of the story is, figure out what is best for YOU. One size doesn't fit all, so you need to see what would be best for you based on your situation, your school district's rules, etc.

Re: Do Non-School Teams Have An Advantage?
 

We can only dream about these. Often the school affiliation feels like shackles.

We can't take home-schooled kids from within our own town.

Except for large distances where air travel is preferred/required we must travel by bus. This is complicated by the fact that our school system's buses cannot leave the state, so travel has become very expensive (sometimes prohibitively so).

The option of going rogue exists but means the students would have unexcused absences for weekday events.

Re: Do Non-School Teams Have An Advantage?
 

One big pro about being in a separate building is being able to meet when we want, as often as we want. Of course, we have to pay rent, and our shared building locks itself up at a certain time of night (be on time, folks), and most of our team draws more from one school than most others, and our freight elevator has broken once or twice, but overall this system works for the team.

Re: Do Non-School Teams Have An Advantage?
 

Can you (or, really anyone) explain the logic in that? The last time I was sick[1] I was mostly incapacitated for over a week, first by dehydration then by the medicine making everything hazy. Under this inane policy I wouldn't be eligible to make up any work. Which, we'll ignore that even once I got back to work I was still nowhere near 100% for nearly a month.


[1] Double sinus infection, not really anything one would consider even a major illness.

Re: Do Non-School Teams Have An Advantage?
 

This is a great question. I have firsthand experience with an equally draconian and tone-deaf attendance policy and I have the same befuddled reaction to it that you do.

Re: Do Non-School Teams Have An Advantage?
 

We have a similar policy although its a little more forgiving.

You can only have 20 excused absences (excused meaning your parents called) per year in every day courses and only 10 excused absences in 1/2 year courses.

All of our robotics competition absences count as exempt absences so they do not count towards our 20. Exempts only happen with school endorsed trips.

However, if you have a specific medical condition that will keep you out of school for extended periods of time you have to call for home bound instruction where tutors will come to your house (2 hours per week each subject) and that counts as attendance.

My freshman year I fractured my skull and got an epidural hematoma keeping me our of school for a month but none of the time I spent in the hospital or at home after the injury counted towards my absences.

Re: Do Non-School Teams Have An Advantage?
 

Usually schools count illness (when your parent calls in) as an excused absence, so you would have been able to make up work. The 5 day limit is a little low, though... what happens if your sick more than 5 days? Do you just automatically fail and have to redo the year?

Re: Do Non-School Teams Have An Advantage?
 

I would have to agree that non-school teams have an advantage. I work with a team associated with a school. We have had a lot of hassle setting trips up for out of state regionals and dealing with bad weather conditions at our home regionals. While also having conflict getting the manufacturing lab and classrooms for team meetings reserved.

Re: Do Non-School Teams Have An Advantage?
 

2706 is a community based team and we have definitely seen the pros and cons of not being associated with a school.

The biggest challenge for us was finding space to meet, build, and store things. Three very distinct problems to solve. A school based team would likely have a built-in supply of classrooms, storage space, and a machine shop. We had none of these things. Our meetings took place at various City of Ottawa facilities including the local public library and community center, and storage has been a combination of borrowed storage cages from the community gym, and mentor garages/basements/vehicle trunks.

Students also find it easier to go to school and simply stay there to work on robotics, rather than have to arrange transportation for themselves after school to get to one of our meetings.

On the plus side, when we do any kind of publicity, it is nice to be able to say that we can accept high school students from anywhere. And our partnership with the local library has been very enthusiastic and fruitful, so there is some built in visibility there.

Re: Do Non-School Teams Have An Advantage?
 

Meet, build, and storage are not necessarily easier for school based teams. For the first 7 years of my team's existence, we had no space at the school. We built out of parents garages, donated space, and from space we rented. We even had to rent a closet off-site during the off-season to store stuff, all at the team's expense. Building was off-site as well. So you really can't take that for granted for school based teams.

Most people here seems to be under the impression that there are just two types of teams - school based and community based. They assume that in these areas their team is exactly like every other team of their type. That just isn't true. Every team is different, and poses different challenges. They key is in the relationships. The advantage is going to go to whichever teams form the best relationships with their school(s) and community. It's as simple as that.

Re: Do Non-School Teams Have An Advantage?
 

Was thinking about posting this exact thing, but you nailed it. It's all about the relationships.

Re: Do Non-School Teams Have An Advantage?
 

We actually get absence exemptions for our events, which was not true our rookie year in 2008 (my freshman year). Our BoE is quite happy letting us be on our own, but will give our kids the absence exceptions, provided a teacher travels with us. We usually have a student whose parent is a teacher, so this hasn't been a problem for us so far.

Our students have a similar policy, but I can't recall exactly what it is (it has changed since I graduated). But I think it's something like 5 excused/unexcused absences allowed per semester, and unlimited exemptions. The attendance policies (at least at my alma mater, we pull from multiple schools) are based on periods, not on days. They have an odd-even block schedule, so 4 periods a day, switching every day ("odd" days and "even" days. For a regional where they miss Thursday and Friday, they only miss 8 periods. Students at our other high school don't have a block schedule, and have 8 periods a day, so they miss 16 periods for a regional. Luckily, they have exemptions now, so they don't count toward the 5 limit.

Re: Do Non-School Teams Have An Advantage?
 

For my team, being school-based is an advantage. The school district for my team actually pays for about 60% of our travel costs, and provides us with a lot of opportunities. All of our absences are excused, and teachers actually try to assign less around competition times. Our school, students and teachers alike, supports us a lot and I feel really lucky that we have that. Not to mention that a school full of nearly 2000 hungry teenagers makes food-based fundraisers really easy!

I really think it depends on how helpful your school and district is, because without that support, it's awful to be a school team.