[FRC Blog] Frank Answers Fridays: June 13, 2014

[Citrus Dad]

Originally Posted by cgmv123

The current season calendar is basically locked-in at this point. Kickoff can't be any earlier without taking place during most schools' winter breaks. Stop Build can't be any earlier without kickoff being any earlier. You need 7 weeks of competition to fit all the events in and Championship can't be any later because of AP testing. At least there's still that week off between the end of the "regular season" and Championship.

Thinking outside the box: Get the College Board to set up a testing site at Champs, maybe the Tue or Wed before competition or the Monday after. Allow qualified team members to transfer their test site to St. Louis when they qualify for Worlds. That would remove the back end scheduling constraint.

It seems that FIRST and the College Board should have exactly the same overall incentives here and given the high % of FIRST participants taking the AP (and the SAT), that the College Board should be more than willing to work with FIRST toward a solution.

Other spring sports (e.g., baseball, track, etc.) are able to work with the AP testing schedule. We should be able to do the same.

[cxcad]

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

Thinking outside the box: Get the College Board to set up a testing site at Champs, maybe the Tue or Wed before competition or the Monday after. Allow qualified team members to transfer their test site to St. Louis when they qualify for Worlds. That would remove the back end scheduling constraint.

It seems that FIRST and the College Board should have exactly the same overall incentives here and given the high % of FIRST participants taking the AP (and the SAT), that the College Board should be more than willing to work with FIRST toward a solution.

Other spring sports (e.g., baseball, track, etc.) are able to work with the AP testing schedule. We should be able to do the same.

what about champs after aps? Then there will be much less stress for everyone..

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

Thinking outside the box: Get the College Board to set up a testing site at Champs, maybe the Tue or Wed before competition or the Monday after. Allow qualified team members to transfer their test site to St. Louis when they qualify for Worlds. That would remove the back end scheduling constraint.

It seems that FIRST and the College Board should have exactly the same overall incentives here and given the high % of FIRST participants taking the AP (and the SAT), that the College Board should be more than willing to work with FIRST toward a solution.

Other spring sports (e.g., baseball, track, etc.) are able to work with the AP testing schedule. We should be able to do the same.

I'm not sure testing at/during Champs is the best idea for the students. I know I would have a very hard time focusing on my exams.

[Pault]

Originally Posted by cxcad

what about champs after aps? Then there will be much less stress for everyone..

Once APs are over your into the 3rd week of May, and starting to push into graduations (my school had graduation 2 days after APs ended). Which would really suck if some seniors couldn't attend champs because of that. And after graduation season is over your looking at final exams for non-seniors, and then a lot of teams aren't allowed by their school to have field trips over the summer.

FIRST really is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Its best option to expand the overall season* would be to have build season in the fall, then take a break over the holidays before starting events. But that obviously has plenty of drawbacks as well. My personal opinion is that we should wait things out a bit longer to see if any solutions come up, then if not then get rid of bag-and-tag and push week 1 up by 1-2 weeks.

*build and competition season

[T^2]

Originally Posted by cxcad

what about champs after aps? Then there will be much less stress for everyone..

Some schools hold finals immediately after AP testing (which makes a lot of sense, if you think about it...). Some schools have them two weeks after, or three, or four. If you have champs after APs, how will you satisfy everyone?

[Foster]

Originally Posted by Cory

Schools that start after Labor Day often end at the end of June.

Just wanted to plus this post. Schools openings are earlier and earlier for some reason, but the result on the other end is Graduations well before Memorial day. But at the current pace of moving forward one day per year means that the FIRST season will occur over "summer break" starting in 2050.

I was a regular attendee at school board meetings where I was told that parents wanted the earlier end date. So I would do a "show of hands - who didn't understand that a 1 June school end date would mean a 25 August start date" and get a room full of parent to stick their hands up.

For what it's worth, VEX has a 25 day gap between the last world event qualifier and the championship. That solved a lot of travel problems.