Snow days are killing us

FIRST General Forum
21

I think that you are underestimating the logistical differences in clearing a city like Philly and an area like you are in. First Philly only gets half as much snow a year as you guys do, so they have not spent the money to develop the infrastructure to clear the snow. In a year like this with unusually heavy snow fall it is extremely hard to stay ahead of the weather. Most of the North East has already hit their yearly averages for snow fall (in many cases causing them to exhaust their budget for snow removal) and it is not even February yet.

I recently moved from Upstate NY to Western VA. Their attitude towards snow is completely different. We got 3 inches in VA the other day and the Area colleges got a day off. In upstate NY we got 12 inches one night and classes were only delayed by an hour so they could clear the walkways. Having the investment in infrastructure to handle snow is key. I thought it was crazy that places here closed with so little snow but then on my drive to work it became apparent why, there were cars off the road everywhere.

Cars off the road in western VA does not have a huge effect on traffic. However a similar problem in a city like Philly (with ~5x the population density of Toronto) would be devastating). The obvious solution to this is to buy more snow/ice removal equipment. That just isn’t possible for most of these cities. They are already having trouble with finances, cutting sports and other school programs, taking more money away from other programs to help pay for snow removal is just not an option.

As far as missing build time because school is closed goes, all of the schools I have worked with (6 schools in 3 states inculding public and private) prohibit any meetings of school groups, even off school grounds during snow days. It is a lot to ask a teacher who mentors a team to permit the students to meet when if word got back to the school about it that teacher could face disciplinary measures.

22

Seems to me that those policies are somewhat flexible. If the teams calmly, cohesively, and respectfully approach their school board, they can usually get the board to make concessions given the time-restricted nature of the competitions. I know that originally back in 2003 when 1075 was a rookie, and had the opportunity to go to CMP in Houston, TX following the Canadian Regional where we were regional finalists (thanks 188, 306) we didn’t end up going because the school board would not let our students cross the USA/Canada border on a school trip. We have subsequently gotten the school board to change this policy, and have been actively participating in Offseasons in Flint, MI (Kettering Kickoff) and North Brunswick, NJ (Brunswick Eruption) as well as attending 2010 CMP in Atlanta.

School board policies CAN be changed, if the school board is approached correctly. Whining and stomping feet will get you nowhere, however.

23

Many school districts policy - No school no after school activities. Period. Bending the rules may cause a team to be suspended. Just have to deal. If you think it’s bad now look at the latest computer model runs for mid next week. Looks like a repeat.

24

I agree with you that Philadelphia, PA has roughly 5x the population density of Toronto, (according to wikipedia) It also has roughly HALF of the area (in the “City” field, on wikipedia, since I’m not really sure how to compare them otherwise).

Increased population density, and reduced area should make snow removal easier, NOT harder. There’s less area, and therefore less snow to move. You also mentioned that Philly gets roughly half the snow Toronto does.

Toronto is also home to the North Americas widest and busiest highway (Our 401 is 16 lanes wide at its widest point through Toronto, and handles an average annual daily traffic of 425,000 cars (2004 numbers)) and the Downtown core’s density is so high, that there is nowhere for them to put the snow they plow off the roads. There is no doubt that both cities would come to a screeching halt in the face of a abnormally large snowfall. However, when I hear this same issue every year coming from teams north of the Carolinas, I have to wonder how “abnormal” this really is.

This is besides the point I was trying to make however, and that most people live within a 30-60 minute walk of their school no matter what the conditions are. Whether its safe to drive a motor vehicle to get to school or not, you CAN get there, and so its reasonable to appeal to the school board to allow your team to continue work, even when classes have been cancelled. Perhaps reminding them that your team’s sponsors have put up LARGE dollars for your students to have the learning experience that participation in FRC affords them, but that they’re unable to take advantage of it due to the school board’s policies. My understanding of why school boards call snow days is an issue of safety. They don’t want the kids getting hurt in accidents on the way to school. Show them how you can be safe, and they might change their tune.

25

Your best bet when encountering any of these administrative roadblocks is to sit down and ask yourself: Does this rule protect my best interests… 90% of the time you will realize that it does not. My suggestion is to remove yourself from that situation and find a detour if you will. My favorite tatic is the Non-school sanctioned event. Back in the day my team was given an oppertunity to attend the championship however, we were unable to get any staff to chaperone us. The solution was to get all the parents of interested students together and have a meeting. Three parents volunteered to chaperone the trip to the states. Since there was of course no time to conduct background checks etc. We ran it as an out of school trip. All of the parents wrote letters of authorization in case any red tape were to pop up. This entirely removed any liability from the school and there was nothing left to stop us. The robot had already been shipped down so the worst they could have done was accuse us of “borrowing” the robot without authorization- of course they were thrilled we were able to go regardless of their restrictive policies. All in all it was a great trip and nobody got their panties in a knot.

26

In California, there are “fire days” instead of snow days. Must say I rather take snow days over fire days when the skies are red and ashes “snow”.

27

There is a reason why we named our team “The Arctic Warriors”. Being near Syracuse (where the real snow in NY hits, don’t ever think Buffalo or Rochester has it worse. I did live in Rochester too.) is always a pain, but we always plan for the snow days.

It’s actually the mentor “break” days that are worse for us then snow days, but hey you need to give the mentors at least one day a week off from working their tails off.

28

That is only when the 401 doesn’t shut half of those lanes down for construction!

As to the serious point regarding safety. I have lived in upstate NY, just across Lake Ontario from Toronto, and the snow removal was fast and efficient, due to the shear volume of snow every year. I now live in Southern Maryland where some years we get almost no snow, and other years (like last year) we got several feet of snow during three major storms. We lost 17 days last year because of this. We, too, asked to be allowed in the building and we were rejected by the board each time. Our board is very supportive of our team, but safety is number one. Tragically, this was illustrated a couple of weeks ago. A student at one of our high schools in the county was on her way home, and we started to get a mixture of sleet and freezing rain, and since the county can not quickly treat the surfaces, and she killed in an accident. No amount of asking nicely will ever convince the board to change that policy, no life is worth a couple of extra days in our build season.

Here is how we handled last year’s Snowmeggedon - we developed a cooperative program between several teams to set up assistance teams at the Chesapeake Regional - which we called “Operation Snowmeggon”. By the end of Friday we had every robot built and running they way they should. If weather continues to impact your area, I would recommend contacting the regional director and work with your regional committee to set up the needed resources at the regional. I have the documentation and the forms we built to allow teams to request assistance. We were referred to as match.com for robots at the regional! PM me if you would like for me to send you that info. You can also go to www.robobees.org and find that info on our website.

Stay safe!

Steve

29

Historically, if our team was anticipating a snow day, we would bring everything we need to continue progress to a student’s house. Mentors would not really be able to meat with us, but work was still accomplished.

We have not had any troubles in the past 2 years, thankfullly, but the 2009 season came with a week off school and many trips to a student’s house.

30

Best way to prepare, is to keep a keen ear to the weather reports and have an off site, away from the school, where you can regroup if you need to. Our team has a small factory space, from one of our sponsors, which we use for storage and prototyping. we also utilize a very small machine shop, one of our mentors has, next to his home, about 8 miles away from the school, which also allows us the opportunity to do some work. Plus being from Wisconsin, we’re used to the heavier snowfalls.

31

We’re in the same boat as the OP, and we’re right outside of Philadelphia.

The problem we’re currently experiencing is that many towns have exhausted their snow removal budgets and aren’t too keen on paying the amount of overtime required to clear many storms in a timely fashion, which leads to them waiting to try and save money by having the people responsible for Snow Removal on the Roads, and from Bus Stops do as much of the snow removal as they can during normal working hours.

Usually, 816’s HS is very quick about removing snow from the parking lots, and when it is done fast enough we are allowed to go into the school and work. Due to District Policy we are not allowed to “work” elsewhere, and we are not allowed to come in until all of the snow has been cleared. (Work as in, work on the robot or do anything that is technically considered a robotics team meeting - though this doesn’t prevent Programmers and Designers from working at home)

Also, our head mentor has a 20-25 minute commute to the school, my drive is anywhere between 25 min and 10 min depending on if I’m coming from Home or work, so it’s often too dangerous to risk driving to the school if the roads aren’t cleared - not to mention that most of our kids do not live within reasonable walking distance of the school.

I guess if we lived somewhere more accustomed to large snowfalls we wouldn’t be in this position, but usually anything above 4"-6" is something that they’ll close schools over. Also, we don’t have the luxury of being able to use snowmobiles like our friends in Canada - though if we could, it would be awesome.

32

We’re not too far from you - same problems but more access to a build space. Not much of a space, but we can get in. Be in touch ([email protected]) if you want to talk through some ideas about assistance. BTW, first started my work in FRC by way of a Philly Charter (Mastery High Team 1394) robotics team I founded.

33

For the people who keep posting to “meet somewhere else” again, that is not the issue. The team also does not have many dedicated day-to-day members yet, so it is not easy to ‘round up some kids and go build in a garage.’

As for politely asking the school board for access to buildings on off days, this is a city school board. A very large city. It doesn’t work the same way at all as your local town’s district. Personal contact is not very accessible and neither is working your way around the system.

Regardless, JJ, even if we have to end up finishing the robot at the regional, we have a huge line of support behind us. Don’t start to worry too much!:slight_smile:

34

We lost over a week due to snow, and more time due to not being able to get parts. We are nearly 3 weeks in and have not really started assembling the robot. We start assembly tomorrow.

If our robot works and especially if it works well it will because of the design and visualization capabilities of Autodesk Inventor. We are hoping Inventor is saving our hide.

.

35

Let me preface this by stating that I have very little experience with the school system in the United States, beyond that it follows roughly the same age bracketing and grouping as Canada, and they call their high-school years freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior instead of grades 9-12.

In Ontario, the school boards are run as a district level (this is a similar concept to counties in the states, some of ours are even called counties.)

Toronto is a special case. A number of years ago the area known as the Metro Toronto Area, which encompassed the then separate cities of Scarborough, York, North York, East York, Etobicoke, etc was conglomerated into the “Mega City”. It all became known simply as Toronto. Those former cities and towns that got swallowed up are all still referred to colloquially by their original names, and even shown that way on maps, but there is no such thing as the Town of North York anymore, for example. This area is all covered by the Toronto District School Board. TDSB actually SPONSORS a number of FRC teams, as there have been many teams (led by 188’s original drive more than 10 years ago) that have pushed them to support this fantastic program. TDSB covers a populated area of approaching 3 million people.

The school board that 1075 belongs to is the Durham District School Board. DDSB covers all of Durham Region, which encompasses the cities Pickering, Ajax, Whitby, Oshawa, Courtice, Bowmanville, and Newcastle along Lake Ontario, and extends northward to Brock Township, which is near Lake Simcoe. This is a huge geographical area, and each of the constituent cities have populations ranging from 80,000-200,000.

Perhaps I’m not understanding something correctly, due to differences in the way things are done south of the 49th parallel, but I don’t see size as a good reason that appeals can’t be made, and pushed on the school board to make changes that are a good thing for the students. At the very least, you can hope to gain some insight as to why the rules are the way they are, rather than aimlessly complaining about them. Its much easier to work with a set of constraints when you understand why they exist.

Granted, 1075’s success at dealing with our school board might also stem from the fact that the board offices, and our school are physically in the same building. Maybe my view is simply skewed.

36

I have a couple issues with the proposal you are making. First would be that for many teams in difficult situations, particularly in the south (Virginia, Georgia, etc.), snow storms are far less frequent. Thus, besides the fact that the cities do not have the budget to handle a large annual snowfall, people just do not anticipate it.

It will be very difficult to get a school board to change their policy in time for it to help any team currently effected by certain snow day rules. Most school boards do no move quickly, and they do so for a reason. They investigate risks, and logistics, budget implications before making what we may interpret as “simple” or “small” choices. On top of all of this, it does not make up for time already lost.

Lastly, it is important to keep in mind that even FIRST robotics must adhere to policies laid out by school boards. If a school’s policy is to not allow a club to meet on any day where the school is closed, then the policy has to be respected. Some schools/teams have the ability to work a little more independent of school systems, but most HAVE to comply. We are not above certain rules just because we are a part of FIRST (not that I am implying you said that). Those rules tend to be in place to protect the school district and the people affiliated with that district.

I understand what you are trying to say, but it is simply a different situation because of the location. Every team is in their own unique situation, we need to be careful not to paint with such a broad brush when it comes to handling certain circumstances of the team.

-Brando

37

So far, team 2016 has had 2 snow days and roughly 5-15 people per meeting (out of about 40 members) because of snow and lack of safe roads to drive on.

Help?

38

By no means are we aimlessly complaining (myself and the OP) just hoping that FRC has the allowance again, that was cool last year. I too come from a team used to working around snow days, so I’m not concerned. We also have plenty of help around these parts.

I am not too worried though. Priorities need to be set once access to materials is available.

39

How much insight does it take to see the obvious? When road conditions are such that it is dangerous for students to go to school, school activites are cancelled. Period.

40

For better or worse, the difference here is that people are lawsuit trigger-happy, and often use it to project blame for their own mistakes (or random accidents) onto a third party. So there are a lot of rules made to minimize risk of accidents/lawsuits, which is why there are warnings on coffee cups that say “Warning! Contents may be hot!”.