Teacher Stipends

[Mr. Lim]

With respect to the Toronto District School Board - the 4th largest public school board in North America:

a) does your local or state school district provide stipends

No. Not for robotics, nor for any other extra-curricular activity.

b) if so what are the parameters, hour worked, stipend paid, state or local funding?

N/A.

As much as I would love for the TDSB to be able to encourage participation with a sizable stipend, the realist in me knows the business case can't be made. Some information in this thread shows a football coach in a board receiving a $9000+ stipend - but there's a good chance the football programs there generate revenues that easily cover that expense.

For a board like the TDSB, where good experienced teachers are generally paid decently, the purpose of a stipend would be to avoid the loss of good teachers who have already made the commitment to robotics.

Beyond the hours that teachers spend, little expenses inevitably come up throughout the year.

Granted, most teachers will expense direct-robot related costs to the team...

But there are little things: take-out dinners for the family when you are absent, baby-sitters, gas for part pick-up runs, roaming charges when you're at competition out of the country, the list goes on and on...

The dedicated teacher accepts these things are going to happen, and normally just shrugs them off. But when they happen it's nice to be able to know that they're somewhat "covered."

I actually tracked my non-reimbursed robotics "expenses" last year in as a teacher in Quicken, and they were somewhere in the ballpark of around $450 CDN. Of course, your mileage may vary .

[ebarker]

Originally Posted by Mr. Lim

As much as I would love for the TDSB to be able to encourage participation with a sizable stipend, the realist in me knows the business case can't be made.

I disagree. We get what we celebrate. The proof of that is in the compensation.

As much as I love football, and with all due respect...The mission of the school is to educate students, not create players for the NFL. I don't have problem with the coach stipend, but I do have a problem with the inequity, especially given the mission schools.

Re - the 'business case'.
a) how many professional athletes live in our school district, and pay local taxes ?
b) how many people work in this district that directly and indirectly benefit from the effects STEM education has on the local job market.

School district funded stipends is is a different funding source than revenues collected through other aspects of the football funding.

Re the 'business case - The case is there..


.

[pfreivald]

Our tiny little town has a stipend for FRC coach and for FRC assistant coach; ~$1800 and ~$600 respectively, with the exact amount contract-dependent.

I think for me last year it came in at about $0.17 an hour. Woo!

I did it for free the first year, but after that was told that the union would not allow unpaid extracurricular duties, so they had to give me money. I was cool with that...

I offer that last tidbit not as an amusing anecdote but as an obstacle that some teams might have in establishing a new team.

[teachsail]

QUESTION(s):

a) does your local or state school district provide stipends
Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest in the US pays no stipends for robotics coaches. Principles have some discretion and could fund them if they wanted to. But the principal knows I will do it for free, even as I am trying to figure out how to pay my own bills.

b) if so what are the parameters, hour worked, stipend paid, state or local funding ? N/A

Los Angeles Unified School District is not anti-robotics just clueless. Its just not on their radar. We have talked to our board member and our supervisor a little but were they really listening?

LAUSD has very few schools in robotics, just 2 years ago only 2 FRC teams. The vast majority of teams in Los Angeles County are from private schools or other smaller school districts.

We will have to keep working on them.

All of the funding for the team and the two classes come from fund-raising and grants, or my pocket. OUR ROBOTICS TEAM supports the two classes. When football sells tickets the money goes back into athletics, so no academics are supported, unlike robotics.

[treffk]

Last I knew ours was $4000 for the coach(as long as they were school personnel). It was one thing our original coach set up through the school when she retired in 2008 because she knew we would have a tough time finding another coach.

The year after she retired, the only person we could get to agree to coach(after the school appointed robotics coach/football coach decided the 2 conflicted to much) was one of our history teachers who did not know a thing about FIRST. It made for a interesting year but he made a comment towards the end of the year that the stipend did not make it worthwhile due to gas prices to get to build.

Although now the team has our first choice pick of coach from 2009. So everything worked out in the long run.

[M. Mellott]

When 3193 was formed 2 years ago, we were informed that the school board would not fund an extra-curricular robotics program with money from the district, but myself and the other lead mentor were to be given a $1000 stipend by the school board for our work. However, when we went to collect, we found out that the stipend actually was to come from the money that we raised on our own for team expenses through grants and other fundraisers and would therefore affect our overall team budget (Hey, $2000 is a lot of money to most teams). We balked at the idea of taking away money from the team so as not to take money away from the team and did not accept the "stipend". We had to sign a paper that we "donated" the money back to the team.

The positions were changed the next year to be volunteer positions receiving a $50 stipend (so that we would still be considered "paid school employees" and have access to the school during off-hours). And yes, the money was to come from the team budget. We took the money this time, but then turned around and used it on team expenses (at least I think we took the money--can't remember).

The lack of formal stipends from the school board has kept all of our industrial arts teachers away from working with the robotics program, opting to take other paid positions such as Assistant Baseball Coach or Drama Club Advisor...really annoying!

[akoscielski3]

I havent even heard of any teacher or mentor getting money for helping with clubs or sports. I know that no teacher gets paid to coach or help with any club or sport. Maybe its because my team is from Canada not the usa.

In my opinion teachers should (edit: shouldn't) get paid to Volunteer. The teachers and mentors on my team, do so much the reward of knowing that they helped out students was a big enough reward for them. Our lead teacher spends Hours away from his family to help out, and goes for days when a competitions. I dont see why teachers and mentors should get paid for something they want to do, its almost like a hobby, You love doing it, its rewarding knowing you accomplished something, but you don't get paid for it.

Just my opinion though.

[Molten]

Originally Posted by akoscielski3

In my opinion teachers should get paid to Volunteer.

I fully support teachers and mentors getting paid whenever they help out the team. In doing so, they tend to lose the ability to be considered volunteer. Afterall, once you get paid to do something it becomes a job. Perhaps I'm playing semantics, but volunteering is a job when you get nothing out of it other then the feeling of a job well done.

Jason

[rees2001]

Originally Posted by akoscielski3

\
In my opinion teachers should (edit: shouldn't) get paid to Volunteer. The teachers and mentors on my team, do so much the reward of knowing that they helped out students was a big enough reward for them. Our lead teacher spends Hours away from his family to help out, and goes for days when a competitions. I dont see why teachers and mentors should get paid for something they want to do, its almost like a hobby, You love doing it, its rewarding knowing you accomplished something, but you don't get paid for it.

I love running our robotics team but there are many things I have to do that are not directly related to showing kids how to build robots. Not trying to rain on your parade but the paperwork alone is enough for me to justify a stipend. The hours away from my family, the hours I spend doing robotics work rather than playing with my daughters makes me feel somewhat OK with the money. When I started 12 years ago I had no desire to get paid for the time. Like Patrick said, our school union would not let me volunteer to run the club unpaid. It makes other teachers look bad for taking money and sets a bad precedence with the district.

I would rather not say exactly how much I make but we have 3 positions with the school. 1 club advisor and 2 club assistants. The total money for the club is slightly over $4000 and is divided up so that the advisor gets about twice as much as the assistants. (you can do the math to figure out about how much I make) I tried to do an actual hourly wage and it somehow came out to around $2.00/hour. I figured it was a lot worse than that.


So at $.17/hour, does that mean that Patrick spends over 10,000 hours every year on robotics? Unless my math is wrong that is more than 1 year per year, astounding! Where do you find the time? ( no really how did you add an extra month to the calendar and spend it all on robotics and never sleep?)

[MrBasse]

We don't receive a stipend in the district where I teach. Last year was our rookie year but it was made clear to me when I formed the team that it would remain self funded.

-Mr B

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by ebarker

School district funded stipends is is a different funding source than revenues collected through other aspects of the football funding.

Re the 'business case - The case is there..


.

Very interesting argument, I guess the difference is the return on the football coaches stipend happens within the same year, where as the other is a nonspecific time period down the road (and maybe not even return on their investment, but from others who went to other schools... and vice versa).

[Kyle Love]

The school district I am in highly supports robotics as a whole, mainly Vex and FIRST. I am now the head teacher for middle school initiatives. I do receive stipends for the schools that I work with (high school robotics not included). We only receive around $600 per school that we work at. This is meant to cover travel to/from school expenses. On the flip side of that, the school funds many of our projects and allow us to purchase quite a bit of materials for the clubs. This, in my opinion, is a greater asset then paying me more.

[ehochstein]

The School District in which I volunteer for FIRST has absolutely no interest in FIRST whatsoever. They have actually tried to steal our sponsors away for other programs that they are more interested in. Slowly but surely our relationship is getting better but I would still call it "rocky". Currently as a mentor of the team I recieve no stipend from the school district and our head advisor who is a teacher for the school district also does not recieve a stipend. The only way the school district supports our team is through the room they let us use. It is the same for our sister high school on the other side of our city. (their team number is 3184)

I have sent multiple letters and emails to community leaders such as the city council and the superindendent most which end in no replies, or when I was still a student at the school I recieved a call from my principal explaining to me the concept of "dollars and cents". Advisors for just about every single other program (Debate, Speech, all sports teams etc.) do recieve stipends.

Summary: Anything to do with FIRST or Robotics in our school district is entirely volunteer based.

[ehochstein]

Originally Posted by Wiifi

The School District in which I volunteer for FIRST has absolutely no interest in FIRST whatsoever. They have actually tried to steal our sponsors away for other programs that they are more interested in. Slowly but surely our relationship is getting better but I would still call it "rocky". Currently as a mentor of the team I recieve no stipend from the school district and our head advisor who is a teacher for the school district also does not recieve a stipend. The only way the school district supports our team is through the room they let us use. It is the same for our sister high school on the other side of our city. (their team number is 3184)

I have sent multiple letters and emails to community leaders such as the city council and the superindendent most which end in no replies, or when I was still a student at the school I recieved a call from my principal explaining to me the concept of "dollars and cents". Advisors for just about every single other program (Debate, Speech, all sports teams etc.) do recieve stipends.

Summary: Anything to do with FIRST or Robotics in our school district is entirely volunteer based.

**Update** With FIRST Robotics being accepted into the MSHSL (Minnesota State High School League) everything I posted above is subject to change.