Currently our team is the only team in a large community with many area high schools. I want to target our recruiting efforts effectively according to cost benefit. I’m attempting to find a range between a tall approach with many subteam specific recruitment pitches in local schools vs a broad approach with general presentations at many more distant schools. I’m curious on this communities perspective on how long of a commute is too far to travel to attend a meeting.
Additionally, how do teams overcome transportation challenges? Is coordinated student carpooling (with parental consent) safe and effective?
Is a gas scholarship based on travel distance and regular attendance a realistic solution?
I am assuming this would be how far is too far for students
There is also some nuance in there with how difficult the drive is (i.e. city driving with heavy rain potential vs. Open country highway). As well as when students can get licences and vehicle availability (a bunch of 14 year olds with licenses in ND where there are several times more vehicles in the state than people is way different than a bunch of 16? 17? year olds in New Jersey.
You can further look for more niche highschool sports as a model (i.e. wrestling, at least in my experience) for what schools allow for travel times or distances
Background:
My high school team recruited students from multiple high schools in the district (at the time 2, currently more than 2) and between that and the way students could pick their high school - it meant students were commuting from all over Milwaukee. Students got home via bus or a ride or driving themselves. Bus passes were provided for students who needed them. Families set up carpools independent of the team.
The team I mentored in Iowa started as a one school team and quickly turned into a 4H team that recruited from the entire county. I think some students could literally walk home while others had 30+ minute drives. In an area that turned real rural real quick, families seemed excited for the opportunity. For two families with commutes that I can think of specifically, a parent became a mentor and stayed the entire meeting that their kid was there.
My following teams were all one school teams so transportation was never explicitly an issue.
I voted 30 min because as an adult that is the limit I’m willing to drive myself. My parents got pretty frustrated if I routinely asked for rides across town because that 30 min trip for me was an hour for them.
The real answer is “whatever commute your students’ families are willing to commit to” - some families will drive 45 min each way for the opportunity and others won’t. The most we can do is increase student access to robotics decrease artificial barriers - but we can’t solve everything.
Typically this is something families figure out amongst themselves. The robotics team can be a hub to begin these conversations but IMO you don’t want the liability headache. I’m not going to pretend that 2023 is the same as 2008 - we managed to organize a carpool back then but the liability/risk landscape was different (or I was 14 and unaware of it - hard to say).
That said, I know there was a time (again, a decade ago) when some teams would provide rides for students to ensure they could come to meetings. If this level of access is important to your team, get the insurance and permission forms to implement it. Then “how far do we drive” is up to your drivers.
I like this idea. I think some level of $ per mile per day is a reasonable way to help students who have longer commutes. Even partial subsidization could go a long way. Some workplaces only subsidize commute when workers carpool - that’s something you could consider doing along side a gas scholarship.
You raise excellent points. I should clarify this is for students willingness to travel. I’m also not sure how to distinguish between parents willingness to give rides and students driving themselves without getting too into the weeds.
A lot of this is hyper specific to the locale, which makes it hard for the community to give feedback over just a poll. Maybe ask for examples (like Katie provided) to get after some of that nuance and grab context.
The team I mentor and that my kids were on is a half hour away and I don’t think the kids would be on the team if it were much further. Build season is already a drain at 5 days a week. What has really made this work is 3 other kids from their school ride the bus home with them and then I drive all of us there. One of the kids parent is a mentor that gets there late because of work. A big thing was the team we are a part of really took us in and didn’t make us feel like we were outsiders so we gladly make the drive and do what we can to support the team.
For teams I’ve been on, the majority of students live within a 20min walk/drive. When a team is a community team, I think a lot of students self-select into participation based on proximity. No team I have been on has paid for student transportation to/from meetings.
Occasionally there are extremely dedicated students who have been as much as 1.5 hrs away, but these are not the norm, and they usually reach out to you for participation versus dedicated recruitment. Their parents are usually very engaged in the program.
I drive about 10-15min, and I don’t even live in the school district. If you are recruiting from many high schools it sounds like it might be time to start more teams. I would be look for how to have a team close to every student in a few years.
Yes certainly. Our team roster has been dwindling recently, hence the recruitment initiative. Our mentor group has agreed that it would be foolish to spend resources on starting adjacent FRC teams when the sustainability of our own team is already in question. Recently nearly 5 or 6 area teams have folded due to pressure from COVID and we are lucky in some ways to still be standing. Once we get our ducks in a row, rebuilding the FIRST community in our area will be our next project.
Having fewer, longer meetings may help attract folks who live further, as the fixed commute cost is a lower total percentage of their commitment time to the team.
We went from a one school to two this past year. We do building at one school, then switch to the other school for practice space. We meet shortly after school until about 7pm Monday through Thursday then a fairly full day on Saturdays. Monday through Thursday we try to provide a one-way shuttle after school, then parents pick up the students at the meeting end.
The older students may have the ability to drive themselves and/or carpool. That’s up to the parents to make that happen. The important part of this is communicating our schedule (and the transportation challenges) during parent meetings in the fall.
We recruit through a combination of outreach events, student-to-student recruiting and teacher recommendations. We found that active recruiting is best.
10 years on, “Katie’s team” is still county-wide and we still draw mostly from the original (and largest) town. Typically, 20-25% of our kids are from the surrounding towns. We don’t offer any sort of commuting scholarships (though I suspect we would on a case-by-case basis if that’s what was needed for a dedicated member to keep participating). [Right now we have the opposite problem: way more applicants than we have room to safely accept due to our workspace size.]
Well, on my team, we have a mentor and student that drive 1.5 to 2 hours (ONE WAY!) for every meeting in the build season, and we meet almost every day for the first 6 weeks. They rarely miss meetings and have been doing it since 2018! This probably shouldn’t be the baseline for everyone though, they’re nuts and absolutely phenomenal XD
Considering your team sounds like it is in a more suburban area, I think 30min is the max that most parents would be willing to drive. 45min would be a stretch, and I’d expect it would only be students where it’s their only major activity.
I’d survey the parents of your current students and see how far they would be willing to drive their students, and see what the 80th percentile distance is. That would likely give you a good idea of where to focus.
We’re a bit different from other teams posting here - as a private catholic school, our students come from a rather large geographical area. We have some that live 5 minutes from the school, and others that commute from across the Twin Cities. But since it’s part of the makeup of the school itself, it’s not something we’ve really had to think too much about as a team. We provide space at the school for students to hang out until meetings start, so those with long commutes don’t have to spend all afternoon in a car. We’ve had parents self-organize carpools before, when we had several students all living in the same general area - they would all go back together, eat together, then come back to the space together. We also have upper classmen driving around lower classmen to get food between school and meetings. So we end up with a bit of everything, with the only thing the team really does is make sure there’s space for students between school and meetings. Everything else is self-organized by students and parents.
For the OP, I think it’s great to target recruitment as wide as you can, while recognizing that distance may be a problem for some students. This is a situation where you might be able to look towards a future of spinning off a second team - focus recruitment near you to get the core you need, then add in another area where you can get some carpooling going for students. As that area grows, you might find it becomes a big enough part to form its own team that can build more local to those students. Who knows, 10 years from now you might add 3-4 new teams in your area that way!
Thanks for your input Jon, I think you’re right. Recruiting a student base from the highly populated urban area that is between 20-30 minutes away would provide an excellent foundation for a future team there in 3-4 years.
Occasionally there are extremely dedicated students who have been as much as 1.5 hrs away, but these are not the norm, and they usually reach out to you for participation versus dedicated recruitment. Their parents are usually very engaged in the program.
For this reason alone, whenever someone asks our team, the only FRCFIRST Robotics Competition team in Northcentral Ohio in about a 1hr+ drive radius, about who we accept we say if you are willing to drive to our build space to build robots with us, you are welcome on the team. We’ve had students that lived an hour away make a dedicated effort to participate. Our outreach radius is about 7 counties. Myself and my family live about 20 minutes away.