school politics

[Chief Hedgehog]

Originally Posted by The Ginger

Hey CD, our team has been fighting school and MSHSL policy for the past 3 years of our existence, the biggest problems we are facing are 1. that if you wish to attend an event (such as a week 0 or last weekends JUMPSTART) you are required to take/invite all students and 2. when going to an event all team members wishing to attend MUST ride in a school bus or something of the sort. no one can provide their own rides.

These seem like logical rules at first, however sometimes like in the case of week zero events you wish only to bring select students (drive and pit teams) due to there not being enough space at the event or you not wanting to have to supervise all of those extra students.

Another problem is transportation, buses in our district cost A LOT of money, so if we wanted to go to JUMPSTART for example it would have cost us $3000! I ended up unofficially attending with a nearby team (by the way GREAT job by CIS (4607) at putting on that event)

Are there any other teams in MN or around the country that have run into similar issues and if so how did you take care of the problem. I do understand why these rules are put in place but they are hampering the growth and development of our program.

Thank you for any help you can provide.

Goodness there are a lot of issues here.

First off, there are correct channels that you must first go through when approaching the school about your activity/sport. Since you are already under the Banner of C/I ISD, you are halfway there.

So, what needs to happen is that your team needs to have the discussion at a leadership level (Captains, coaches, mentors, etc). Figure out where your team is struggling (if you have not done a SWOT, I would highly recommend getting this done, Ginger Power?). I won't get into that here, but if you want more info on this, PM me.

Back to what you have posted:

Transportation:
I am fairly familiar with your district and after working with a couple of others in the area, I can state that schools around your size do not charge that much for busing for a one day event. I do have a couple of examples of Trip Calculators for area schools (and their buses) that I can share with you, but for a 'typical' school bus to travel from Cambridge to SCSU it would cost around $350 for the day once you figure in the mileage and hourly rates (based on 8hours). MOST schools that I have seen work with this type of calculator.

As 4607 is a hybrid team (along with a few other schools that are in your Mississippi 8 Conference) that operates under Becker High School's Banner, we do have certain things that are of benefit, and other areas that are a detriment. Transportation is one of those areas that are both. We do not use the school busing for most of our events. However, we have in the past.

Training Events and Week Zero:
I am not certain the Training Events your school has looked into, but I can make an educated guess that you have attended or wanted to attend the same ones that 4607 attends. As for the Training Events, Splash (UofM) and JUMPSTART (SCSU) both are open to as many students as your teams wants to bring.

I am not sure about all of the Week Zero events that 5464 has looked into, but we bring all of our students to CenturionKrawler at Centennial (hosted by 2052 and 2472). I would like to think that all of the other teams in attendance are doing the same.

Again, I cannot imagine a bus from Cambridge to Circle Pines for an 8 hour event costing more than $350.

However, over the course of the season I could see the Transportation bill adding up to $3000.

Again, there is a lot of information on this, please let me know if you have other questions.