Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

I know there are alot of them in Michigan right now, and i was wondering if it hinders any of the other teams by putting them behind?

I know we still try and make it to GM when it happens, but a lot of teams do their building at school.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

We usually have Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday meetings, so today's school closing isn't affecting anything; but since our team is school-independent, we can (and do) go to our GM facility, as we would on any other day, and so we don't find ourselves shut down by a school closing.

JBot

EDIT: I'm only on CD this early because Holly High is closed. *Snow day! Yes, some more time to procrastinate on my homework/autonomous code...*

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

I woke up this morning to find that our school is closed this morning. Yes indeed it does affect our build season because on days that there is no school. It is very had for our engineering team to make it to GM to put in our daily 3 hours of work. Therefore, our 1 engineer is stuck doing everything. That is totally not fair. Hey Mat! your on my team...... im still looking for a way to GM....

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

we are school independent, so we will most likely have our meeting (still waiting for confirmation). We might actually have a LONGER meeting.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

Yes we do 99.5% of our build at Pontiac Central and I was crushed to find out that we did not have school today, because that will put us behind now, unless we can meet somehow today at school but I have not heard anything.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

Usually not unless the weather is really bad.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

Much as I enjoy a good snowfall, we just don't get them here in Columbia, South Carolina...which means snow days are tremendously shocking experiences, where robotics becomes the last thing on everyone's mind. (First thing, apparently, is to prove how dumb you are by trying to drive on it.)

However, just last week we had a delay due to "wintry mix" in Richland One. This in and of itself isn't a cancelling event, but when only a fourth of the student body shows up to school when it does start, you kinda cancel the meeting. That definitely put us behind.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

As long as I've been on my team, we haven't had a real school closing in NYC. There was the subway strike last year, but that technically wasn't a school closure, and even if it was, it wasn't during the robotics season.

However, we always have finals week without classes during robotics season, and half of the week after that, most students aren't allowed to come to school. Come to think of it, all of the really big snow storms have been on days when we wouldn't have had school anyway. During finals week, we have meetings every day, and I think we're the only students in the school in the half-week afterwards.

It might be because of NYC's excellent public transit system, but we come to our school no matter what. Even on during the most awful snow storms, we come to work on the robot (when it snows, we all wear Hawaiian shirts :)). That way, afterwards, we can have ourselves a good snowball fight, as we try to figure out how we're getting home.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

Snow days don't seem to effect us much here (considering there probably hasn't been one in the past 50 years). However school closings don't seem to effect us much, as we work on both MLK day and President's day.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

School Closings don't affect us however, the weather does. My car won't start in this cold whether and it (the car) has been known to just shut off while I'm driving. I don't want to brave the roads, so I suppose it sets us back.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

We don't meet at our school, so we can meet whether school is open or not. The weather has been bad enough recently to occasionally prevent a few members from making it to meetings, but generally it's been fine. (We did have a few people get stuck in out driveway yesterday...it needs plowed...)

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

If school is canceled, extracurriculars "can't" meet. But since we don't work at the high school, we still work but make it optional. School doesn't close too often here (and Michigan Tech NEVER closes) but we do have a lot of students who live out in the country, and are unable to make it because of weather.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

Technically we could meet but we wont have any of the engineers to help finish off the robot and seeing as we don't have a fully designed gripper. (Its so close we can taste it) it would be kinda pointless so were going to wait until three till they get of work to meet.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

We're semi-independent of the school. None of the mentors are school employees and they don't actively fund us (as far as I know. The school's in more financial duress than I want to know about right now.). But we ARE hq'ed in the Adult Ed. wing of the high school. So yes, we are EVEN MORE behind now. (Insert serious censor edit noise here.)

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

Snow doesnt seem to be much of an issue in michigan, due to the fact that we handle snow too well :mad: . but the cold does cause school closings, and we still have meetings bc we work @ GM....perhaps even a longer meeting today? who knows.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

Even though we can't get in to school to work on the robot, I do have all day to program :cool:

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

We usually have our meetings right after school in one of the rooms. As far as I know we will not be having a meeting today.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

we are school dependent so here in Rochester NY team 73 won't be meeting today. It makes me a bit unhappy about not getting the work day we need in but at the same time It makes me glad that we met yesterday otherwise we would be much worse shape.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

Branden, I love you.
Now if only I knew anything about C to help out...sadly, my knowledge is limited to HTML and a little bit of Flash. (darn you, Adobe! I still say Macromedia!)

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

no a school closing does not affect our build stuff...we are at our mentors house so if the school closes, we dont have to worry about things like that.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

We are so lucky that even when the school is closed like today that we are able to still come in and take care of bussiness that we have to do.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

The post on our teams forums has asking if we meet today has gone unanswered, but I am guessing we will still have a meeting.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

School closings don't really effect our meetings because we build at the ford plant all of the time. Other then that if school is closed the only challenge is getting to the plant,especially if the roads are bad!

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

We didn't have our meeting, and we have to make up yesterday because it was our second emergency day this year. We have to make it up with a half day of school on Saturday June 9.

Our calendar - http://www.oasd.k12.wi.us/display/di...olcalendar.pdf

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

I can only think of my school being closed suddenly once--9/11/2001. We work every day, but we don't take breaks for school closings. This may be due to the fact that we don't get harsh weather more than once a year or more.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

All activities were canceled after school today, but we still met! (the 8 of us that showed up that is :D )

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

Well, IF our school is closed, then no, we don't work on the robot. However, we were one of the only groups that stayed after today (at a school of 4,000, where there are about 100 different clubs), even through the 5ish inches of snow we got.

Our school district is notoriously bad for giving closings, and delays. I can say we're proud *cough* *cough* of the fact that although every school and school district around us had a 2 hour delay for cold weather, we did not. Oh, and we're still the only district without a delay for tomorrow thus far :ahh: .

So, I guess bad weather doesn't affect our progress :p

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

School closing is great for our team. Because we do not meet or build at a school, we can go to the shop and get a lot of work done.:)

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

We technically have the ability to meet when the school is closed, but even like today, our school got let out early because of the snow.. so our meeting was canceled for all but a few.. just because the weather was so bad.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

Yes, it did greatly. We already missed last Monday due to a snow day, and now yet another. Just got the email that we'll be staying afterschool everyday for the rest of this week. We usually meet Mon, Wed 2:30 - 5 and Sat 8 - 1, but now we had to add Fridays regularly, and now it seems Thursdays might also be on the list. I love Ohio.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

393 meets at Greenfield Central High School, and last night we had to cancel out meeting because of the snow. The school ruled that everyone was to be out of the building by 3:30pm and to not return until the next morning (this morning... on a 2-hour delay...) Half of us had the mind to go anyway, but we didn't to make a bad impression on the school corporation. So, we decided against it. :)

But, we really need the work time... I don't think we can afford another closing like that. And this is coming from someone who sees a lot of the progress on just about everything....

Good luck with the snow,
Danielle 393

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

Technically, all after school things were cancelled at my school the past 2 days. However, we have a key and let ourselves in anyway. The principal saw us and didn't seem to care, so we assumed we were okay.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

Our team is from Warren, Ohio and we have just currently experienced some "cold days" which caused the cancellation at our school. But during times like these we still open the shop at the school. Yet there are not as many kids show up many of mentors are not able to make due to the fact that the shop is opened earlier due to the school cancellation. But we are still able to make progress, just not as much as we would have hoped for.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

If the high school we are working at closes, then the meeting is shifted to Clarkson and becomes an optional meeting.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

Our team feeds from several schools and we don't work at school. School is closed today, so we can't have an official meeting. Instead, we have an 'unofficial meeting' and it isn't counted against you if you can't make it. Our coach call it his 'liberal leave policy.'

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

We work from school, but usually when there is a school closing we come in anyway. The same goes for early dismissals from school, even though they say that absolutely all after school activities are closed, we come in anyway. :D After all, FIRST isn't just another after school activity, it's a lifestyle.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

Well, two years ago we had it pretty bad, with nine (9) snow days during the build season, fourteen (14) during the entrie school year. And our build site is at the school as well.

This year it's been pretty good, with only three (3) so far. Unfortunately all three have been the last three days. Kind of sets us back with only two weeks left

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

We Havn't been able to work on our bot for the last week.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

if our school gets snowed out, we still try to make it if i clears up later in the day but most of the time not


but last thursday and friday our school was shut down for water and mold damage in the social studies building but since we are in a differnt building of the school, we got to come in and work on the bot all day(after pulling some strings with the school)

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

If the schools are closed, we aren't allowed to work in them. Luckily, we don't meet Wednesdays normally anyway, so today's snow day didn't change our schedule. If we know that it will be snowing soon, and that we may lose work time, we typically pack up the stuff so we can meet elsewhere.

school closing
 

:D I'm from Indianapolis and we had a day off school yesterday but it didn't effect us at all and we are still in the right track as always.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

my school was closed because there was a whopping 1 inch of snow

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

Our school cancelled PM activities after school on Monday, and closed school (for the first time in 3 years) on Tuesday. We were unfourtunatly unable to come in, and as Jeremy Tice said, it is quite difficult.

"Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?" -Yes

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

Yep, Here in Fredericksburg the same thing happened. We were already supposed to have a half day which meant an extra few hours to work but school was closed so we couldn't get in :(

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

We were lucky, we only recieved about a 12" or 14" overnight, right next to us in Oswego, some people got 4 FEET! I find that pretty incredible.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

School closings don't have any affect on us here in Erie PA. Actually our school district is in Millcreek Township, the township that borders Erie PA on the south and the west. We have not cancelled school despite getting in excess of two feet of snow in the last week. Sometimes our numbers are down at our evening meetings but work continues!!!

Holidays are no problem either. We continue to have access to our school's wood and metal shops. It helps to have a school board member (ME!) on our team as a mentor.

Of greater concern was a potential teacher strike which was narrowly averted last week! Under PA state law that strike could have lasted 11 days. We were planning to continue during the strike with non-technical parent volunteers and our GE Rail Systems mentors, but progress would have been slowed during those 11 days.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

Absolutely! I'm working with multiple teams in MI, and snow days affect all of them.

But it's a mixed bag. Some of the teams love snow days, while others hate them with a passion.

The teams that love snow days are those that can still get into their school or build work place whenever the school is closed. This gives them a LOT of extra work hours during the build, so they often wish for snow days!

But there are also teams who are horribly penalized whenever snow days occur. For example: Team 1015 (Pi Hi Samurai, Pioneer HS in Ann Arbor MI) is greatly crippled whenever the school is closed for an extended stretch. Unlike many schools who may be "closed" yet the school building is unlocked, there's a PHS school policy that bans all groups from meeting at the school whenever it is closed for snow days. As a result, the multiple subzero windchill "ice days" this build season has hurt them tremendously. It prevented them from getting access to their school shop build site for a number of days in a row, damaging their build.

Personally, in the future I'd like to see a rule that gives teams the ability to appeal their ship date with FIRST whenever "natural disasters" delay their build season. I'd like to see an "add one day per snow day to the ship date" policy instituted (limit 5 additional?), given a written statement from the school that "they were not allowed to meet at their build location for XX days, due to factors beyond the team's control" (and outline them).

If the build was totally "equal opportunity", this wouldn't be needed. But that's not true. An extension policy for "extenuating circumstances" only seems fair. Southern teams don't encounter snow days like northern ones do. Mid-continental teams never encounter down time from coastal hurricanes or floods. Plains states don't see CA mudslides. ANY team's town may encounter a major power grid outage, or an epidemic "shutting down the town" (etc, etc...).

Just my $0.02...

- Keith McClary
Chief Engineer, Team 1502 "Technical Difficulties"

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

Sir, that is genious. Petitions, anyone?

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

In Ontario, we never get any snow days, our adminisration waits until there is like zero chance of making it to school alive before anything is cancelled. And even if buses are cancelled, schools still run and you're expected to walk (which we do during build season, lol). Our biggest problem is that our school is not always unlocked on weekends, and our mentors are not always available for supervision. We really only have a team of about 10 students with 1 dedicated (daily supersvision) mentor, and 4 secondary ones. We often cannot work in the machine shop because our main mentor isn't certified. So basically, we're behind schedule even without snow days...joy.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

Here in west Michigan we get LOTS of snow. We had school last Friday but since it was snowing heavily the school called off after school activities. They were also cancelled for Saturday and Sunday, we had snow days Monday and Tuesday so we lost 5 day of work. All of our build is at the school. THis happened two or three years ago too.

I hope there are no more off days until after ship.:yikes:

On a side note: What hotel are teams attending the Detroit regional staying at? Does anyone know a good priced one close to Wayne State University?

Email me at: Hinckley@att.net if you know any.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

In VA yesterday we had a fair bit of snow, so no school. Doesn't help the team with only 11 days till ship...

Chris

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

I understand what you are saying but as it has been said many times FIRST isn't always fair. Just like in the real world weather may delay your work but your customers deadlines don't change. All part of life and the real world.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

Actually, I've been in business for many years. And yes, deadlines DO often change when natural disasters, labor strikes, et al affect a supplier's ability to produce a custom product or part for you. (If someone is making something for you, a few days late is a LOT better than trying to restart the entire process with another supplier!)

And yes, FIRST isn't always fair. However, they DO strive to have a "level playing field" for all teams. IMHO, this subject definitely affects northern teams much more often than southern ones due to the build being in the winter.

I do feel it is worth bringing up with FIRST at the next feedback session. In fact, I feel that if enough teams (at a majority of the sessions) all ask for some kind of an extension system for weather days to be created, FIRST can't help to take note of it. Perhaps they'd consider it, perhaps not, but the "Squeaky Wheel Theory" applies here! ;)

- Keith McClary
Chief Engineer, Team 1502 "Technical Difficulties"

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

Our school rarely closes so usually not a problem...this past tuesday is the first "snow day" we have had in 4 yrs here in Greece..which was only because of bus problems which also resulted in all local schools closing for the day...

We ended up not being able to meet on tuesday...not sure if it put us back too much but of course it did a little bit...im guessing a couple other local teams have missed a day or two of meetings for the same reason but i could be wrong :p

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

School closing definitely effects our progress during build times. We are a rural community so 85-90% of our small team lives out of town. Our school only closes if the roads are closed, so it means that we aren't coming in either way to build... This year we have missed 8 days, because we had some terrible weather off the lake closing all roads in the area.. many people at our school loved the 11 day weekend, but our team has definitely been set back a bit... its unfortunate that FIRST doesn't recognize these circumstances... as it effects our team at least 3-5 days a year (if not more)

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

My team is approaching a massive possibilities for snow tuesday, wednesday and hopefully not thursday. We have some plans we might implement, one includes exacuating the school with all the build parts and going to a local community center/house. Hopefully won't com to that but the call will be made by this afternoon.

Chris

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

Same here, tuesday and wednesday are looking bad for us now. We only go to GM on Wednesday of those 2 days, but its still looking like a few days we have ot make up on the "School work" side of FIRST season.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

It definitely affects our building. Whenever our school is closed, all extra-curricular activities are also cancelled. For example, we had an early dismissal today and so we can't build tonight. There is also a good chance school may be closed tomorrow, thus further delaying our building.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

Actually our team is not affected at all. Even if our school does close we meet at the Romeo Ford Plant. we still need a bit to do so, no time can be wasted. But we will be fine. So i will wish all of the other teams good luck and have fun. :D

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

Today the school cancelled all after school activities, but didn't let us out early...

Theres still a ton to do, and we already lost a day....hopefully we can finally get this thing done tomorrow, it's been little set backs that put us behind a week.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

you have it easy, they kicked us out of the building after school and the school is closed until Thursday.

we where far enough behind to start with.

- Bochek

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

Heck no! If school closes tommorow (which it most likely will), we will still come and rock out on the bot!

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

our school was closed today... so we didn't get to work on it (the irony... getting our first snow day in like, 5 years, and it being in the last week of build season, when its most crucial we build...)

tomorrow we don't have school, but I think we'll sneak in.... :rolleyes: we'll see what happens.

Luckily its mostly coding we have to do, and making the OI.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

i would go and work on the robot if we could get into the school, but no luck so far. when the schools closed, its CLOSED.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

We don't meet at a school (we're two combined), so closings actually help us. We haven't had school since Monday, and we've used both days as work days. Same goes for tomorrow, they've already called it off.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

I wish were so lucky. We considered making use of the time and insisted that we would not come if we thought it wasn't safe. That doesn't matter to the people who make the decisions for school though. They just keep saying that it is too much of a 'liability'. I would understand if there was much snow on the roads most of the days we are canceled. Oh well, this just means that we may have to pull some late nights to get it done.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

School was closed today, but diehard members such as myself got at the school at 1130 and worked till 2030. It was a good session. Almost crashed going to and from, but its all good in the name of FIRST.

EDIT: School was closed, but we have such a strong community support that the principal tells the staff to do whatever our team asks for. example, opening the school for us

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

*sigh*
i WISH my school would close, we never do... even when every other school in the greater montreal area is closed, loyola never does, can anyone smell the testosterone?

honestly i think if it did we'd just build for the whole day, a few extra hours can't hurt.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

We had a closing today, so that's two whole days lost so far. If they close again tomorrow, we are going to be way way behind.

There isn't THAT much to do, it's just we've had some set backs with orders and stuff, and that we haven't had a full work day this week, which is what we need to finish.

Looks like we'll be working through the weekend, and all day monday.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

we normally plan ahaid, on nights where we think that school might be closed for the next day we pack up everything we need, and bring it all to Harris so that if there is a snowday a few members with specific jobs in mind can work there. Although it is nowhere near as affective as if we were working in our own shop at the school.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

We've had two days off from school... and thats two days locked out of the roborics shop. I'm realllly getting worried about getting done on time.

Thankfully... I brought the prototype robot home with me so I could work on programming during those two days off... :] .... even though the autonomous isn't quite done yet... :ahh:

-q

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

Aye! :D Seriously, it's easy for the teams who are still meeting to say all this stuff, and if it was only a day or two we were missing then that's another story. But we're talking almost a whole build week for some teams that are lost! How can we compete with you all if some of us don't have as much of a robot done? Over 400 schools in the Midwest were closed for the two arctic chill days alone, and most of them couldn't get to the building. And like someone said before, a lot of our school won't let us in if there's no school at all. I understand what everyone else is saying about how it's treating us like the real world, and it's unfair and stuff. But it isn't always unfair.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

Even without a snow day, my team's always had problems with meetings being shortened/canceled, due to our school-assigned teacher not showing up. [All our other mentors are there, but not this one, so technically we can't meet...it's understandable, but annoying.]


Fortunately, 1923 was able to move all our stuff to a team member's parent's [unused] office space...we met all through our snow day yesterday. This should help us throughout this long weekend, too, because this teacher probably won't want to spend his time in school, [let's just say, he hasn't quite gotten FIRST fever yet..] so we'd probably get kicked out there.

Plan B was moving stuff to team members' houses, which, at least for a temporary fix, could probably work for some other school-based teams like us.

Essentially, when we expect a snow day, we move the night before, just in case. It's worked so far.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

History shows that a team can build (or rebuild) a competitive robot at a regional.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

We've had 5 snow/bad weather days in the past two weeks. Like I said earlier, we don't meet at our school, but being a rural county the roads aren't always exactly pristine. Last night coming home from our meeting, my dad and I hit at least 4 spots where the snow was blowing across the road so badly the road disappeared from view entirely.

I personally think teams who know they usually encounter bad weather should plan for such an occurance. For example, when the roads were too bad for me to get to our meeting on Tuesday I spent the day working on Chairman's essays. I understand that not every team member could do work from home, but having an alternate meeting site or a plan for what team members do from home would help take some of the stress off when bad weather hits.

Re: Does a School Closing affect your progress during build season?
 

It definitely affects our build - we are not supposed to be in the building if school has been officially called by the county for weather...plus many of our students don't have transportation to the school without the buses. We had one day off last week and are in our second snow/ice day this week. It's disheartening to think how much we have to accomplish with so few days left...sigh.

Robyn