SCHOOL CLOSINGS !
 

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2106 feels your pain. Trying to get some info here:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...threadid=81736

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Oh okay. Great !

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Don't complain, theres alot of teams that go through this every season, I know 810 has more than once. Heck, I even remember seeing a thread about an Israeli team that got their KoP 11 days late, now thats behind.

Better of being a little behind, instead of risking your safety on icy roads.

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Oh wow, 11 days late !

Yeah, maybe it is better being behind than being at the risk of getting hurt .

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Yea, really...

With that said, is it really that bad? Im assuming this is the storm that NY will be seing sometime tomorrow...

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Situations like these are precisely why we have a 5 week build season.
Shift happens.:D

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Considering those who live up North and for those who live down South; for the South, its bad.

Because, evidently were not use to all this snow . So we don't have the equipment to deal with this storm, (lack of plows, salt, etc..so the news-channels say) . The roads have just been slightly cleared yesterday and the storm happened on Saturday. The whole problem I still think is affecting us going to school is the "BLACK ICE" !

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Yeah, up here in northern NJ it can be pretty dangerous to drive during a snowstorm, even with snowplows and salt trucks constantly attempting to clear the roads.

Even when it's not snowing out, leftover snow can melt and refreeze and cause icy patches on the road.

Although it is fun tuning into the local radio station to see if the schools are closed... (aka. Snow Day!)

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Snow days are great because we get to work all day.

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I can remember a number of years back moving the Team 975 build to the warehouse area of my workplace. Had the tall shipping crate in the back of my little Toyota pickup for days - it looked like an outhouse. :D

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Our team just got our batteries yesterday! And, our KoP got delayed for 3+ days in customs. So, don't feel to bad. There are a lot of international teams out there who have to deal with being behind (and waiting extra long to get orders, or imperial parts) every day. Plus, our team is attending a week 1 regional, so we don't have the option of shipping late. If we shipped late, we would not compete. If I was a judge, I would want to hear how your team dealt with not being able to meet during a severe snow storm--for your area of the world. I can't imagine what would happen in we got snow here in Sydney. :rolleyes: Making do with any situation is what wins awards. SO, work extra hard to catch up!!!

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Every year we have several meeting cancelled due to snow. Last year we even had a meeting cancelled due to a bomb threat at the High where we meet. This stuff happens and is uncontrollable. We've learned to live with it and make up the time later here in the Northeast.

In one well publisized and discussed instance in 2007 we had school cancelled on the Friday of the Connecticut regional, The kids prents drove them to the event and we were competing until the Superintendent of schools found out the kids were there and sent a message that if the kids continued to participate they would be suspended. At least one other team has this issue as well. To prevent our kids from getting in trouble we borrowed the drive team from our friends Aces High to finish our matches for the day without getting DQ's and hurting our alliance partners.

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With more snow in the forecast this weekend, we're thinking about powdercoating our robot white and calling it "Snowpocalypse". It's been a miracle that we're doing something simple this year, and it looks like now it'll take another miracle to even get the simple things done.

For teams that are used to the snow, well, perhaps they could give us pointers rather than saying 'deal with it'. In VA we're used to perhaps 4-5 days of it, yet this year the schools will be closed for the equivalent of double that at least.

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Its always so hard for me to feel sympathetic to the northern (or mid-north anyway) US teams when their schools close. Many schools will allow their FRC teams to operate, EVEN if the school is closed, but up here in southern Canada, where in less than 2 hours I can be in Buffalo, NY, our schools almost never close. It would have to snow at LEAST 12" in a single night before they'd think about it. This year, its been eerily mild. I dont know whether to think winter is going to be done soon, or if we're gonna get slammed with a couple feet in March.

EDIT: My recommendation: go in anyway, if your school will let you, and if they won't, take the robot to a team member/mentor's home and work on it there.

RE-EDIT: Or CAD/Inventor work, or work on your website, or if you can't get the robot out of the school, build some subsystem that you can bolt on when you DO get access to the robot again.

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i feel sorry for you guys. The snow here is gone (in general), and that's all were gonna get for a while.

Maybe you guys could go in on a saturday, if your not already?

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If this were my team, I would not have pulled the students for 2 reasons:

1) Their own parents drove them there. They're not technically there under school supervision, and therefore, its not the school's problem.

2) I would have let the students continue to compete, as that's what they spent 6 weeks preparing for, and its not fair to deprive them of that. I would argue with the school board about the asininity of their call later, and make sure the students didn't get into trouble.

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It's nice to say that and we argued that as well at the time, but here are the facts:
1.) It is a school santioned extracurrullar event, and we live in litigation happy society so the school wants to cover it's butt in case anyone got into an accident going. The field trip was officially cancelled with school that day and therefore the were insurance issues with the stidents getting covered for injury at the event.

2.)It was a new superintendent of schools who didn't have an appreciation for the situation, of what the students did to get to this point. We were concerned he might try to retalliate against the teachers, and we could not get in touch with school board mentors in time that day, so in order to protect the teachers from retaliation we complied. The following week the school board did some dammage control for us, but we could not guarantee their buy in until after 5 pm on that Friday.

It's easy to say how you would act in this situation, but given the circumstances, and I'm not listing everything here, letting the students participate was not something that we could do.

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The trouble is, that's a harder call for a teacher to make, because the superintendent is their superior in the school board's hierarchy. They risk retribution through their employer for failing to comply.

One of the most troublesome things with extracurricular activities—having participated in the process of organizing them several times—is the need to define who is responsible for the activity, to the satisfaction of all of the stakeholders. If the parents drop the kids off at a regional, is that implicit consent for their participation (even if no form was signed)? What if the school board refuses to permit the school-based team from participating, but the students and teacher want to attend anyway; does the school have the right—ethically and legally—to prevent this? Should FIRST/the regional committee allow these "rogue team members" to participate without the backing of the school (which presumably owns the robot)? And what if the local regional committee is organized using some of the (physical and human) resources of that same school board? And of course, who's liable when something goes wrong? (I have the irrational urge to draft indemnification papers for the non-teacher mentors, and make the students and their parents sign them...in theory, that could be useful if a parent goes litigiously crazy when their child gets hurt.)

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Hey, fair enough, I wasn't there, obviously. Just given the information I was, thats what I would have done. If there were other factors playing into the decisions, thats ok, and obviously it can't be changed now. I just hate it when school boards, etc, stick their nose into the teams business without realizing the repercussions of their decisions. I know I got upset with our school board in our rookie year (2003) when we had a shot at going to championships then (in Houston), and they said we couldn't cross the border. We've since gone to 6 offseasons south of the border (2007/2008/2009 Kettering Kickoff (Flint, MI) and Brunswick Eruption (North Brunswick, NJ)), and this year we're registered for the 2010 Championship Event.

EDIT: I am always one to stand up for what I believe in, and worry about getting other people to see things my way later. Sometimes this helps me, other times it hurts me. Take it for what it is; who I am.

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If you don't have access to the school, you can always work on website, awards, creating detailed lists of what needs to be done, or even just eat dinner for once with the family (it really is fun!:p )

And really try to push to gain access to the school in future events, you really don't want the school closed the week before ship and no way to get in.

Good luck!

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Don't go and give us ideas now. ;)

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I hear you guys in VA under NOAA's Winter Storm Warning are getting around 28 inches of snow! It might turn into a Blizzard Warning if it the winds and precip get worse... O_O

We haven't had a snow storm like that in a while!

If you are planning to drive, be sure to take it slow. I've seen even the best 4-wheel drive vehicles slip and slide on icy roads. And that's even when the public works is out in full force with plows and salt spreaders...

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We usually have around 5 snow days during build season. If the high ways open , and a mentor can go we usually meet. This rarely happens though because, what we get is what we call a bruce county winter. To define this its a little diffucult, but because we live right on lake huron, if it snows it SNOWS. 4 years ago we had 2 weeks solid off school. During those 2 weeks people were not able to leave their homes and many hydro lines were down. 3 years ago we had our sideroad drift in with at least 2 meters snow within the night(ill se if i have any pics). Fortunately for us this year has been nice and calm, but we welcome you guys to come visit us some winter.

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I remember this, I was there. I heard this and was like what?!?! That's crazy. We have a cancellation for after school activities today and no school activities tomorrow. Therefore, we cannot work on the robot or anything else either.

Cass

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Na Here in Hendersonville North Carolina, the rode crews suck. Near by schools are having to have Saturday school to make up for the snow, and even that gets canceled. We haven't gotten past Prototyping yet. And it doesn't help that, this being my 4 year, am the only one who has done this before!:ahh: Same thing with my Dad and the mentors. So believe me my friends, Team 1225 feels your pain.

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:cool: Team 2389 is falling behind too because we were a week out because of snowstorms.:cool:

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Here at 876, we are located in north east part of North Dakota. We have had some days (5 I think we are up to know) were we could not work due to weather, but up it is part of life up here. The days we cant make it in to work on the robot we work on other parts from our homes or apartments. The Programmers will program, other people will draw up designs for search the web to solve problems. Mentors will order parts. People will work on awards. Than when the weather passes and we are able to get out, we will throw our thoughts, designs, programs, and anything else we did during the "snow day".

Really all it means is that some of us have to care a notebook, USB drive, or a computer with us to the build time and take it home with us, just in case we cant meet for a day or two. It also helps to have teammates Phone numbers, email address, IM names/address, or be facebook friends to be able to send information back and fourth on what they are doing or what they found. Do a little planing ahead and you wont lose days at a time. In the mean time enjoy the snow every one!!!!!!!!!!!:cool:

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Snow day? What's that? Up here in Minnesota, we have snow months... but that doesn't stop us from getting on our snowmobiles and going where we need to go :)

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We finally got to meet last night, got quite a bit accomplished and started out competition bot. Our plans for the weekend are a wash unfortunately, in the interest of student safety, while we did have an off site shop available, that plan was scrapped until we can evaluate the road conditions on Sunday.

It's getting down to the wire, we remain optimistic though.

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Here in Philly, we're expecting 1-2 feet of snow from tonight into tomorrow afternoon. We usually meet Saturday at 9:00 am, but it would appear that we will lose that day, and may very well lose Monday as well.

We lost our Thursday because we measured the frame for the bumpers and found out that it was 37.5" X 28.25" so we spent our entire meeting (6:30 pm - 9:30 pm) fixing that.

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Here in the DC area, they are forecasting the largest storm in DC history (30+ inches). We have already lost almost a week due to snow already, looks like we might lose as much as another week with this one. We have tried to work on as much as possible away from the school, but an only 4 week build is making this one tough! We should have all the major priorities done, but the secondary priorities will probably have to be dropped. Hope everyone in the path of this storm stays safe and warm!

Best regards,

Steve