Quote:
Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery
Does your school district allow students to attend student leadership conferences? Allow teachers to attend professional development conferences? Sell the conferences as those (or better yet, hopefully FIRST can gain some accreditation for their conferences).
Alternatively, volunteer. A school would look bad discouraging volunteerism.
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You'd be surprised.
I'm not sure, again we're only loosely associated with the board of education. But I know they're pretty strict on the missing school for one organization rule. Doesn't matter if it is a conference or volunteering, it's still FIRST, and they've already missed several days (usually three for our "away" regional and two for a closer one) throughout the season. I'm talking about the school board that punished us in our rookie year for going to competitions (we asked for absence exemptions and were denied), and refuse to compensate teachers in the slightest for FLL and FTC coaching like they do for sports.
Our mentors are not teachers, so getting time off for the events is tricky too. It's not really up to the board of education if our mentors can get off of work. They all have to take vacation days.