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Re: Team Transportation to Non-Events
For official events (competitions and such), our school has an arrangement with a local van rental company for discounted rental vans. Sometimes personal vehicles are used if there aren't enough students to fill a rental van. Teachers/Mentors/Parents may drive (as long as they are at least 25 years old) and are covered under the schools liability insurance. Students are not permitted to drive themselves to official events and must turn in a permission slip signed by parents (and also their school counselor if they will be missing school to attend the event) prior to departure.
As for transporting our robot to events, one of our Nexteer (sponsor) mentors checks out a company truck to pull our team trailer (at no cost to us).
Our school district does not provide busing for events, so we would have to pay the entire cost of the bus+driver for the entire day it's used if we chose to use school buses.
The only times we have not used rental vans for transportation was when we went to Worlds in Atlanta, we flew down and either walked everywhere or used public transit (we always got a close hotel). Another local team was kind enough to transport our pit equipment (as they took a tour bus and had extra room).
For more informal local events (demos, team parties, etc.), we generally treat it as a "just show up, we don't care how you get here". For transporting equipment, we arrange for a mentor or parent who has a trailer hitch to pull the team trailer or just transport items in the back of someones minivan if there isn't much stuff.
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