I just checked the paper registration stuff.
http://www.firstinspires.org/sites/d...-2016-2017.pdf
It's intrusive to have a free/reduced lunch question on this form. This isn't something I need to know and it isn't something that FIRST needs to know.
They have always had the race/ethnicity questions at the team level, where I as the Lead Mentor could simply put in the counts or not. Same for gender.
What value does this provide? We take any and all students that want to be part of a team that does cool stuff centered around robots. I don't care about their race, gender, lunch status and neither should FIRST. The only thing FIRST truly needs is the second page that absolves them of liability.