[Amanda Morrison]

As a follow up to all of this, I found out from our team's coach that teachers from our school district are asked to not distribute this information (free lunch statistics, ethnicity and gender specifications, etc.) unless it is absolutely necessary - I doubt this usage falls under this category. Her and I spoke at length and decided to leave the entire demographics page blank.

We did find out that simply putting an X in the Team Budget field will make it show as $0 but show that you have completed the appropriate field (the tab will be checked). We filled out all the rest of the information and it worked out fine.

As for the award essays, we spoke about these as well and decided that we'd simply put a nice message in some of the ones that we questioned: "Our team members would be more than happy to speak with the judges at competition regarding this question. Please feel free to contact any student on our team for more information." This allows us to better assist the judges directly without amplifying any bias they may already have prior to or during competition. We thought that was tactful and not inappropriate for the situation.

Apparently our team has been asked in the past to print out this information from TIMS and submit it to the Regional Director at a competition to "better assist the judges". I was surprised to hear this, since I didn't know that any FIRST field staff was to coach or 'assist' the competition judges... and why does the RD need to give this to the judges at their competition if it's not supplied directly from FIRST? I guess at least putting in polite references to please contact our team will get the judges to talk directly to our kids for correct information, and not rely on anyone else for it.