[Monochron]

How we have done it. Definitely not saying it is perfect!

• best practices
  1. Only take as many adults as you need. If you are bringing lots of parents you may want to make it clear which of them are the chaperones and which of them are just attending. We had some big issues with that this year and issues with parents are an awful thing to have on a trip.
  2. Also, make sure your parents are fully informed about the days events. Make sure they don't feel jerked around.
  3. If you are carpooling make sure every drivers knows what is expected of them. If you plan to continue driving through a snow storm, make sure your drivers are willing to do that. Have discussions about road conditions and emergency procedures.

• tips/tricks
  1. Chose a hotel that has free decent breakfast.
  2. Plan team dinners/events ahead of time. Travelling with the team should be fun. Go to dinner together and have real team bonding time.

• kids-per-chaperone ratios
  1. Pretty much up to whatever organization you are affiliated with. We had a LOT of parents attend this past year due mostly to our need for drivers. We had about 25 students and 15 adults (mentors included). This ended up causing more friction than anything as managing that many adults is sometimes harder than managing students. It is tough on teh parents to have to always be around for the use of their vehicles.
  2. Ratio of 5:1 has been our sweet spot for outreaches.

• transportation (we'd likely start with a Regional within driving distance)
  1. What options are open to you? Carpooling is usually cheapest and you can often expect parents to pay for their own gas. Renting a bus is possible but a tad expensive. Try to find another team or two to pair up with if you are going to do this. Flying can occasionally be cheaper than a bus but that is really fun option as well.

• how the cost is taken care of (travel fee for the students?)
  1. We asked for students to pay for their hotel rooms completely and to either bring lunches or money to buy lunches. We chose a hotel with free breakfast and the team provided dinner each night. We put 4 students in each room to their total cost came to around $70 for 3 nights.
  2. We also allow students to raise money for the team to cover their cost of travel. To explain; each student must raise $200 (through any means) for the team in order to travel with the team. Half of the amount that they raise above that $200 goes towards paying for their hotel. So if a student raises $250 in total, $25 goes towards their cost and they only have to pay $45 out of pocket.

• resources for FRC travel (not necessarily to the Championship)
  1. FIRST used a company called Experient last year where you could go in and get better rates on nearby hotels. I hear some people were successful with this but you HAVE to grab a hotel as soon as the system opens in some cases. I don't know how well it worked because Experient never managed to give our team access to the site. Their customer service is less than useful. You might do better to google / google map search for hotels around the event and just search until you find one you like.