This is a question for the school associated teams. How does the school categorize your team? For example, our school categorizes our team as an extracurricular club as it relates to school district policy.
I am interested in learning what other teams are being categorized as by their school districts. Is your team a club, a sports team, or something else I haven’t thought of? If you are something else I may be interested in learning more about your school policies on that categorization.
Mine is a extracurricular club. It puts a lot of pressure on our teacher advisors (only 2) because at least one always has to be there but they also do a host of other clubs.
Extracurricular activity. However, there’s a few differences from other extracurricular activities.
We have a non-faculty head coach, one non-faculty assistant coach, and one faculty assistant coach. I believe we pay the two non-faculty coaches while the faculty coach is paid by the activities department. We also successfully lobbied for Varsity lettering which started last school year (2017-18, so letters were awarded at the end of the 2018 FRC season).
We are described officially as a club by the district; however, that isn’t quite the whole story. We very much consider ourselves a team, our student body knows us as a team (were actually one of the most successful groups at our school and bigger than most sports and all clubs.) Furthermore, through all the teams in our districts petitioning the school board, our lead mentor/teacher is now being paid nearly as much a football coaches based on hours. Its half hourly pay for up to 350 hours. That was a huge win for the team as we no longer had to spend money for stipend.
It has a special policy that gives it more rights and protection than an extra-curricular, because it is an extension of regular class instruction.
For instance, if a drastic budget cut was forced, all extra-curriculars (including sports) would immediately disappear, but not co-curriculars.
We are a full-on sport at my school. It’s more a function of the fact that our school is so small (private NorCal school), so it wasn’t too difficult to get our administration on board.
We currently only have two mentors, who are both faculty (chem teacher and IT). We’re in the process of getting more mentors, who will need to be fully ID’d/fingerprinted through the school before they can stand in to chaperone anything by themselves.
Officially an extracurricular club, supported by the district’s Career and Technology Education office. I receive a stipend from them, and they pay for our local regional entry fee. At the school level, we are treated like a sport, meaning: athletic eligibility requirements apply for participation in competitions; we get the same treatment at pep rallies as sports teams; and, kids can receive a varsity letter.
We’re an extracurricular club, originally coached by a faculty member, but now ran by non-faculty volunteers. Because of the coach stipend required by the state of Michigan grant, job openings are posted on the Intermediate School District website. For this reason, I had to apply and interview for Lead Mentor 1 while I was LM2.
Despite having a dedicated classroom and full building access, I have to apply for building use through the athletic department every time we hold meetings. This would not be required if I were a faculty member.
We are an extra-curricular club. In our district, that means that we get no real support from the district except for use of school facilities. It also means, since we are technically a “part-year” club, that I receive no extra pay as team mentor/club advisor. My school, parents, and principal are as supportive as they can be within that framework. We have a (small) dedicated workspace for the team and are treated in much the same way as the sports teams are when it comes to publicizing our work and accomplishments. But we still don’t get the monetary support that the sports teams do, since that’s not in the school’s power to do. I’ve tried to convince the district that our team (and the other team also in our relatively small district) should be designated as a varsity sport, but have never gotten traction for the idea. Given that I have more active team members than any of our sports teams, raise thousands of dollars in donations and grants, and have been raising the team’s profile and success at competitions, you’d think that would be enough, but apparently not.
Team 4276 is officially an Academic Curricular Club. This is because we are doing things related to the courses students take. It allows us our own financial account in the school system.
Unofficially we’re the club that is always making a mess in the 200 hallway.
Thank you to everyone that has responded! This has been very helpful. I have taken notes on your responses and will use this to help us understand how we should approach school categorization.
Winter Sport, two coaches paid (winter schedule C - so the same as Wrestling, Basketball, Hockey). However, they let us keep our registration fees so long as we don’t ask for money and all of the tools purchased/donated stay with the school.
