Transportation to Events

[robochick1319]

Originally Posted by Monochron

Hhm, I've never heard of that. How do they vet out the people who CAN drive other students? Do they have to be teachers? Professional drivers from a bus company? Staffed bus drivers?

I ask because we have a couple students from new high schools this year and I don't want to run afoul of any policies.

Yes, I think it is an often unnoticed policy that really affects many teams (though they may not know it yet).

The rules can be complicated but they come down to this.

Students can be transported by one of the following:

• Their own parents

• On a school bus driven by a school district employee with appropriate licenses/training
• On a charter bus driven by a licensed charter bus driver

I would advise all teams to at least look up these policies to make sure they are in compliance. Skirting the rules of your school district can have serious consequences! And, after all, we should put safety first

[Monochron]

Originally Posted by waialua359

Our parents and mentors volunteer to drive most of our students. They sign forms with approval of our principal, providing driver's license and insurance information.

Yeah, this is exactly what I am used to.

Originally Posted by Underdog_19

Our principal only wants school employees transporting kids in school vehicles. Makes it difficult when you have a large amount of kids and short funds.

If you don't have school employees from a student's given school going on the trip I guess they can't attend? I would think there is some recourse here, like being able to have a heart to heart with the policy maker. But I'm not familiar with the situation.

Originally Posted by Kimmeh

My old team only allowed district employees to drive students and they needed to have a chauffeur's license. (Which the school would pay for.)

Yeah, we don't have any school/district employees willing to travel with us so . . . I guess we lucked out policy wise

Originally Posted by robochick1319

Yes, I think it is an often unnoticed policy that really affects many teams (though they may not know it yet).

Yeah, it looks like it. If our school had that policy we wouldn't be able to attend any competitions. Probably could have managed on my previous team (we had much more district support), but it would have been a challenge.

[FireintheDells]

My team of about 35 students and six or seven mentors that travel with us end up having to take a charter bus to regionals. Last year we traveled to the Western Canada regional which is about a ten hour drive for us. We usually rent a U-Haul to transport the robot, pit, tools, and of course food for the trip. This system has been pretty effective for us.

[DonRotolo]

Instead of buying a trailer that might get used 2 or 3 times a year, rent a small moving truck; they are often $20 a day with a few cents per mile. That would handle all the equipment.

People can be transported by charter bus at a reasonable cost; the school surely uses them all the time. If it is near by (less than an hour) consider a school bus instead: Not as comfortable but a lot less expensive.

[Libby K]

Originally Posted by DonRotolo

Instead of buying a trailer that might get used 2 or 3 times a year, rent a small moving truck; they are often $20 a day with a few cents per mile. That would handle all the equipment.

People can be transported by charter bus at a reasonable cost; the school surely uses them all the time. If it is near by (less than an hour) consider a school bus instead: Not as comfortable but a lot less expensive.

This is pretty much what 1923 does. In the past, we've had team parents with horse-trailers (power washed first!) take the equipment, but with our travel increases for districts we would rather not ask the continual wear & tear on their personal vehicles.

Instead, we get a 12- or 16-foot Penske to hold our pit, tool chests, bagged robot, etc. If there's enough room we also bring students' suitcases in the truck to save room on the bus.

(In our case, our school says we need a hotel for anything more than 45 minutes away, so on 'pack-up night' we also have to do luggage checks on the students and load them somewhere for storage until the trip, so it's a one-shot deal if we put their bags in our truck)

School buses are our norm, although for our District Championship this year we got a charter bus for the longer ride/bigger capacity for parents and siblings. Normally we ask the non-chaperone 'fans' to come on their own time, but for DCMP we bring everyone on the bus since it's kind of a haul.

[BrendanB]

Originally Posted by DonRotolo

Instead of buying a trailer that might get used 2 or 3 times a year, rent a small moving truck; they are often $20 a day with a few cents per mile. That would handle all the equipment.

People can be transported by charter bus at a reasonable cost; the school surely uses them all the time. If it is near by (less than an hour) consider a school bus instead: Not as comfortable but a lot less expensive.

You can also rent a small trailer from Uhaul.

For most teams especially those in districts you can do most of your travel with a school bus and a minivan/SUV/enclosed pickup. School buses can be easily acquired through your school and depending on how far you travel it can be very cost effective as I believe we pay for ours with an hourly rate. We transport robot equipment in my family's 15 passenger van but we have also used one of our coaches minivans for some competitions. The bus can also be used to transport a majority of your equipment as long as most of it is in boxes that can easily be placed in a seat. Our team travels via a school bus to a majority of our events (excluding off-season where students are responsible for their transport) throughout New England so that ranges from 45 minutes to 2.5 hours depending on where we go. Its not the most glamorous mode of transport but it is cheap, school approved, and not as bad as it sounds.

We plan to commute daily to our district events (30 minutes and 1 hour away) and if we qualify for the DCMP we will look to stay at a hotel but commuting is also doable.

[JustPlyZ]

During the 2014 season, Halton District school board has 7 robotics team.
We had all 7 teams travel to Northbay Regional with Coach buses.

I'm pretty sure we had 5-7 Coach buses traveling up.
We would use 2 storage space underneath for out team equipment and also students and mentors bags.

Halton District school board is going to have 8 teams this season, going to northbay which will be fun to see.

Have a good 2015 season