Keep FIRST in Michigan (FiM) from killing FIRST Lego League

[Mr V]

Originally Posted by Ed Law

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To save you the trouble to understand the FIRST programs age cutoff. here it is. Jr.LL is K-3 (age 6-9). FLL is 4-8 (age 9-14, 9-16 outside US and Canada). FTC is high school and FRC is high school. There is very little overlap if any. So what I said above to make our parents happy is to widen the range and add a lot of overlap to create flexibility. Obviously I am not advocating for that.

No FIRST's official ages/suggested grades do have overlap to allow people to participate in the program that best suits them.

Yes originally FTC was purely an alternate program for ages 14-18 ( grades 9-12) It has since transitioned to function as both a less intensive alternative for HS and as a transition between FLL and FTC. It is now specifically noted for ages 12-18 and grades 7-12. http://championship.usfirst.org/abou...ssion-programs

For all of the programs the lower age is a suggested minimum or "soft bottom" meaning that it is fine for a younger student to participate if the leader(s) of the team think that person is mature enough, has the skills, or will just benefit in general from that particular program. Try to register a student in STIMs that is older than a program cut off and it will be rejected but you can register a student that is younger than the suggested minimum age.

It is important to note that the suggested min age for FTC was lowered because of areas where it had been implemented that way. That I suspect is one reason that this change in MI is concerning for folks in other areas. For example in our area there are a districts with 8-9 and 7-9 Jr HS so it was left up to the teachers/leaders of the teams at those schools whether or not they wanted to include the younger students. Many found that the 7th and 8th grade students were ready for FTC and had them on the team.

In the case of my former FRC team we were at a 10-12 HS and the official policy was that since FRC was intended for 9-12 9th grade students that attended our 8-9 Jr HS were welcome to participate even after that school started a FTC team. At that school the 8th grade students were allowed to participate before FIRST officially changed the recommended min age/grade for FTC. Since that time we have had an 8th grade student that participated on both the Jr HS FTC team and the HS FRC team.

One of the reasons MI has been pushing for this change may be because of the state grants and how those funds are accounted for by the state's board of education. The reason I suspect this is because of how the grants in my state are structured. The funding officially is accounted for under CTE funds. In our state only grades 7-12 are eligible for CTE funding. What that means is that the only way a school could get a grant for FLL was if the school included 7th and/or 8th grade students. So a team that was at a K-6 school was not eligible. So maybe the MI system is set up where the funds are allocated by school type and it was just simpler for accounting purposes for them to make only schools that are officially "elementary" schools eligible for FLL grants, middle for FTC and HS for FRC. One of the reasons I say that is because what I have seen so far is that MI is not making the change based on age/grade but by what the school is officially recognized as. So by what I've read so far there may be FLL teams that are 4-6 and teams that are 4-8 because one is located at a K-6 school and one is located at a K-8 school. There could be FTC teams that are 7-9, 7-8 or not at all because of how that district officially refers to their schools.