Quote:
Originally Posted by topgun
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. |
Well this is new and I'm going to guess how it came about...
FIRST has been asking teams for this kind of demographic data for some time and most teams have not filled it out in TIMS. I know this because NC teams have been filling out this data while many other states have had trouble collecting it (Shout out to Marie for asking NC teams to collect it and then sharing it back with us).
Now they are shifting the burden to students/parents, which is really where it should have been all along because that is how they can best collect accurate data. The problem is their new online registration system is atrocious and no one wants to use it or can figure it out.
This likely started off as a plan to collect this data via the web form (but now that is a disaster) and then a paper form as secondary.
I suspect this is coming from two or three different groups within FIRST that are all trying to get this data for different reasons (grants, providing to existing sponsors, using it to get new sponsors onboard, giving back to the community, etc). You'll notice that the forms are actually two separate forms with different footers and no page count.
So questions I have for Frank...
1) Are both of these forms actually required?
2) What happens to my team if I don't turn these in?
3) What am I to do with Parents who don't speak English natively?
4) What
guarantee do I (the responsible mentor "I") have that the volunteers handling these forms have been through data privacy training?
5) How is this data handled and transmitted to FIRST from the local events?
6) Why are mentors being asked to collect this data? (Why not turn it into you on the bottom of the form? Don't give it to me.)
Keep in mind you're asking for racial information, financial information, date of birth, location information, and gender information FOR MINORS on these forms. Yeah, this is not OK as it stands.
All that being said, this is good data to have and it should be collected but NOT LIKE THIS.