[Allison K]

Originally Posted by Basel A

Okay, just to be totally clear here (and the petition makes this relatively clear), FiM is not killing FLL. FiM has the position that FLL should be elementary schools only, FTC should be middle, and FRC should be high. Therefore there is less support for teams that deviate from this (although there's nothing FiM can do to teams that register despite not following FiM's structure).
...

An email went out earlier this week that made it pretty clear that teams outside of the FiM progression will not be supported (or possibly not allowed?). The beginning of the message is below...

Teams
As the FIRST website opens for registration of FLL and FTC, I want to clarify how the Michigan progression differs from the US FIRST progression. Teams inside of Michigan must follow our progression. This is the only way to have team within Michigan.

Here is our progression:
FRC High School only
FTC Middle School only
(as defined by your school district)
FLL Late Elementary
(4th grade to end of your elementary schools)
Jr. FLL Early Elementary K-3

While no new middle school FLL teams may be started, there are some middle school FLL teams that have been around since before we started FTC. By next year (Sept 2016) they will all have to be aligned.

So even if we were to register a middle school FLL team so that we could get a field set up kit we still wouldn't have competition opportunities, which puts quite a damper on the experience.