Snow days

[Kyle A]

For 306 it is rare that Corry schools will close, being in the snow belt of Northwestern Pa we are used to a ton of snow. When they do close, we lose out on a build day because we are not allowed in the school. Then the make up days are days we originally had off which were full build days, so we lose them too. What hurts us the most is when they cancel all after school activities. Every one has to leave the school, thankfully they know we have a tight schedule and they will work around the team and if it isn't to bad leave it up to the activities discretion.

Over they years we have lost up to 2 weeks of build because of it, but it hasn't been that bad in years.

[mdituri]

3314 (Clifton, NJ) has school cancelled on Friday, which makes sense, but they are playing it safe and cancelled all activities for Saturday already. No bus, No kickoff. Kids are going to watch from home and read the rules on Saturday. Adults are still going to NJIT to run kickoff. Oh well. It gives them time to read the rules for Sunday morning.

WHEA on the big island (3881 I think) has wind days because they are outside by the ocean. An amazing school.

[BBray_T1296]

Originally Posted by ctccromer

Y'all are lucky. I think I can count on one hand how many times its been below 40 this year in Louisiana. Only snow day I've ever had was in 8th grade, for half an inch of snow! Needless to say, a snowball fight was had.

EDIT: At the same time though, we had an entire week off last week for Mardi Gras, and that did mess with out schedule some.

I can count to 31 (32 including zero) on one hand (1023 on 2 hands!)
Thank you binary

[Brandon Ha]

Once we had a snow "week" that was set on the last week of the build season. We ,as many are, were no wear near complete. Our team has a shaky relationship with our school who provides us with our space and we have a set of keys that our mentors carry that allows us to enter into our section which used to be a classroom/shop/cad room (we had 2 rooms separated). So we did the smart thing. We sneaked into the school and worked on the robot. Afterwards our head talked to the principal and told him what we did. Our team-school relationship has been getting better since.

[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by Brandon Ha

Once we had a snow "week" that was set on the last week of the build season. We ,as many are, were no wear near complete. Our team has a shaky relationship with our school who provides us with our space and we have a set of keys that our mentors carry that allows us to enter into our section which used to be a classroom/shop/cad room (we had 2 rooms separated). So we did the smart thing. We sneaked into the school and worked on the robot. Afterwards our head talked to the principal and told him what we did. Our team-school relationship has been getting better since.

I applaud your honesty but realistically the schools have very good reason to discourage this. It's a security problem and it does come with actual risk.

It would be better to remove the robot from the school and work on it where the property owner knows what is going on.

I will fully admit that in the distant past I've worked around some issues like this but unlike the situation with the snow it was a political problem. I still feel the goal was to manufacture a failure by shortening the work time arbitrarily or to weaken team members by exhausting our much more limited resources at the time. Whether or not that level of intention and foresight was really involved is subject to interpretation.

These days there is much less risk for this. Several mentors and myself are more than adequately equipped to safely transport the robot and most of the tools offsite. The school has been a great help and if push comes to shove we could load up and roll out. We actually do this for good reason when we transport the robots offsite to our mock field.

I think it's important to recognize that sometimes extraordinary circumstances create extraordinary situations. However I don't want people to think that these deadlines are an excuse to simply ignore the very real concerns of others especially where safety is involved. Then again I should hope that in return for respecting other people's concerns they should respect the often extremely hard work so many people put into FIRST.

[Oblarg]

Back in 2010, 449 had to deal with the fabled "Snowmageddon," which dropped about 50 inches of snow in ~4 days on an area that generally averages under 10 inches per year.

We correctly predicted that stuff would be closed for about a week, and hastily put together some contingency plans beforehand. Ultimately, we basically packed up all of our projects and tools, brought them to mentors' houses, and got snowed in there. It was reasonably workable. We kept in skype contact between the various locations.

[Ginger Power]

It's expected to hit -30° F with -60° F windchill in central Minnesota this Monday. . . I feel like this might affect some build sessions including ours.

[jvriezen]

Originally Posted by Ginger Power

It's expected to hit -30° F with -60° F windchill in central Minnesota this Monday. . . I feel like this might affect some build sessions including ours.

MN Governor has closed all MN public schools on Monday:

http://www.kttc.com/story/24355963/2...dayton-closes-
public-schools-statewide-on-monday

[bduddy]

Originally Posted by Brandon Ha

Once we had a snow "week" that was set on the last week of the build season. We ,as many are, were no wear near complete. Our team has a shaky relationship with our school who provides us with our space and we have a set of keys that our mentors carry that allows us to enter into our section which used to be a classroom/shop/cad room (we had 2 rooms separated). So we did the smart thing. We sneaked into the school and worked on the robot. Afterwards our head talked to the principal and told him what we did. Our team-school relationship has been getting better since.

You're very lucky that situation worked out as well as it did, as opposed to, say, your principal removing your team from the school for breaking into it while it was closed. Not what I would call the "smart thing"...

Now that the entire country is on the bag and tag system, am I the only one that thinks FIRST should be a little more flexible with waivers for snow days? This can be a safety issue, and it's not like the whole build process isn't pretty much on the honor system anyway...

[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by bduddy

Now that the entire country is on the bag and tag system, am I the only one that thinks FIRST should be a little more flexible with waivers for snow days? This can be a safety issue, and it's not like the whole build process isn't pretty much on the honor system anyway...

To a certain point I agree. However I think there should be a cut off. If the total number of days exceeds a certain amount then I think whatever climate related issue caused it is safely a disaster and at that point the people involved might be better off focusing resources on that.

For example if a hurricane blows through and levels the school. I doubt it makes sense to focus on FIRST when everyone's education is laying in the rubble.

[gabrielau23]

As a HoCo student, snow days really hurt. We already lose a week to midterms, so every year we have to work with a 5 week build season. I know for the 2010 game, RAID lost a week to Snowmageddon much like Blair Robotics did (loved your eat, shooting, and leaving, btw ) in addition to the midterm week we lose. So we had to work with a 4 week build season. That was painful.

[Racer26]

Pretty sure most schools have midterms or first semester final exams in the middle of build season. Most teams in my experience actually work MORE that week, not less, as the students have more time off from classes than usual.

[rzoeller]

Minnesota public schools were just shut down for Monday due to the cold. Our team has changed our plans to use the entire day as a work day. Any other Minnesota teams taking advantage of this?

[Pault]

Originally Posted by techhelpbb

To a certain point I agree. However I think there should be a cut off. If the total number of days exceeds a certain amount then I think whatever climate related issue caused it is safely a disaster and at that point the people involved might be better off focusing resources on that.

For example if a hurricane blows through and levels the school. I doubt it makes sense to focus on FIRST when everyone's education is laying in the rubble.

If that were to happen, then the team should be smart enough to realize this. I don't see why FIRST would have to enforce this, especially by choosing some number of days off from school as a benchmark.



I wouldn't mind this happening (I might be biased), but FIRST would need to make it clear that it only counts as a snow/other day if:
A) School/Extracuriculars are closed on that day in the town where your team meets.
B) The team does not work on any physical part of the robot. Not even one person in his/her garage.

Unfortunately, it would be nearly impossible to stop the team from working on CAD/code, so I would say that you don't get to make up the first 3 snow days to even things out.

[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by rzoeller

Minnesota public schools were just shut down for Monday due to the cold. Our team has changed our plans to use the entire day as a work day. Any other Minnesota teams taking advantage of this?

Provided it's safe to travel, we may meet later in the day. If it's -60, we'll probably all just stay home and CAD