I’m preparing a letter for our union to use in negotiations for increasing the stipend for our advisors (2 of us) to be more in line with the coaches (who, since our team runs year round and doesn’t have an Athletic Association also do all of our fundraising & travel arrangements) put in as much, if not more, time than athletic coaches do.
Please post if your team’s school advisors are paid and how much that pay is.
We are paid .072 of base salary, which is about $1900.
I realize there are teams whose advisors are strictly volunteer or make much less, but I feel that in our district, if coaches are paid from .144 up to .231 of base salary that the robotics coaches should be paid as much too!
I absolutely agree. I’ve seen the amount of work that our head coach Mr. Cokeley puts in…and it’s probably 10x the amount that any sports coach does at our school.
Windsor Locks pays for an advisor and assistant advisor. I believe the amounts are the same as a coach and assistant coach in our district. Suffield sadly does not currently provide a stipend for their teacher, so the team pays for his travel and other team related expenses.
I hope this helps. We pushed for about five years before we received the stipends. Having the stipend makes the time spent on the team easier to justify to my wife
I know that School District Five has an additional stipend for various positions, which ranges from $738 to $2,418, depending on experience. Now, there’s no position on that list that says “Robotics Team Coach”, but both of 1293’s teachers are the science team coaches at their schools. (For reference, here is District Five’s teacher pay scale.)
Judy,
I don’t know what the dollar amount is for our teachers but I think they are paid at the rate for any after school activity, class or club advisor.
At 1437 we don’t get a stipend through the school, per se, but we managed to get it worked out as part of a grant for job training/technical skills training in which each of the 3 advisors received $2500. And since we had to keep track of the time spent, both student contact time and non-contact time as part of the grant, I can say that I spend slightly more time with robotics than I do as a coach.
Regardless of what any team does, your efforts are focused on what you think is best for your team. I applaud you for it, and I encourage you to continue.
With that said, you may want to provide a more concrete explanation for why you think the coaches should be paid more. Here are a few things you could use:
A timetable of the activities Robotics mentors do throughout the year, especially during build season. Don’t think of this effort as a “compete with sports coaches” thing, but think of it more as an exhibition of how much work the mentors do and how much they deserve this stipend. The fact that other coaches make more should be a reference point to work from, not a “give me some too” standard. I don’t feel you came off like that, but any plea for money from a board may be seen as that without proper justification.
An explanation of the expenses of the team as related to that mentor and how the team would be willing to compromise. You may not win this battle, but you have an amazing opportunity to set a standard of respect for all academic coaches in your school corporation. Provide numbers, budgets, and other information (in concise form) of the money your mentors use and how the added stress of the build season effects them. Stress how much they love the work, but make sure the board understands that there are other concerns.
I don’t know if this is an issue, but try to get parents involved. Hold a team meeting to let students know what is happening - if at all possible, have students and parents from the team attend any meetings of the board as related to this issue. If board members see community support, and the rally of the team behind its coaches, they may understand a bit more how important you as coaches are to the program.
Sherrard’s representative and our “head coach” (in quotes b/c it is questionable) is paid X amount of dollars. I don’t know how much that is. But I do know that is the reason there is not a West coach anymore. He wasn’t getting paid for doing it.
The Rochester City School Disctrict had never paid any of our teachers yet for FIRST particiaption all these years. This year there’s a little advancement of recognition that’s in progress that is so far allowing FIRST to be used for teacher credit. As for stipends go we’ll see how it goes as talks continue to recognize FIRST as an official school team activity like sporting teams. The other school districts will vary but start around $800 - $1700 I’ve heard.
At the present time, we are 4 school districts with 3 different policies.
I’ve been with FIRST for 10 years and have consistently been considered a volunteer by my district. With that said, I do get perks: anytime I do something with FIRST, by myself or with the team, it’s considered conference time and I just get the time off. My situation is a little different, however: I’m a school counselor and don’t have a substitute. My work is waiting when I get back, or I’ve stayed till ??? to get it done before I go.
Another teacher is a volunteer. He is in a classroom, needs a sub when he’s gone, and so needs to plan, and sometimes not go because of conflicts.
A third teacher is paid a stipend on par with club sponsors. He also needs to plan for travel with the team.
The fourth school has a parent who is the ‘official, school supported’ school rep. He is a volunteer. Again, plans for travel with the team.
Several years ago, we had a fifth school as part of our team. This teacher was paid on a scale with a sport coach. Needless to say, we were all jealous!
To a certain extent, the money right now isn’t necessarily that important. It does hurt a bit when you realize that it does have an impact especially on those of us who are close to retirement, and so the amount of reimbursement does impact our retirement!
At our school, im unsure of the dollar amount our teachers have recived as a stipend, but we also like to nominate our teachers for school district wide awards at the end of the year. One in particular is given by very active members of the community who generously provide them with a little extra money bonus. I don’t know if your community has something like that, but its a nice way to show our appreciation for our hard working advisors.
Currently the advisors for team 1002 are unpaid except travel. We are working with our school board now to change this so that there would be a paid head coach and two assistants just as the provide for other large participation sport teams. We were asked to submit hours spent to find a similiar coaching base. The head advisor hours equal about 1100 which equals 27.5 school weeks. No coach has that many hour requirements so the newest discussion is to make it like the band director and assistants because they are paid as a year round stipend due to band camps, marching, and concert bands. If this happens in our county that will result in a ~$7000 stipend for head and ~$3000 for assistants.
Haha, if only it was 1100 hours. That calculation is by far wrong. I re-did these calculations after you lost my first ones and found it to be like 1700… and I think that is still a bit low because of prevalent random instances…
Back on topic…
I think if you can have a estimate of your hours and compare these with the hours of coaches along with comparing your impact on the community as to the coaches in your school (not saying that coaches don’t put in any time and make no impact on the community), then you may be able to cause some change.
Some other figures you might want to have available when discussing this, in addition to the number of hours committed to the team, would be the number of students impacted, perhaps relevant demographic information about the team (are students from underrepresented minorities represented, presenting further grant opportunities), and how many team members graduate and pursue higher education in FIRST related fields. It would more the discussion away from a “look how much work I have to do” feeling to “look at all of the positive influences this program has on our students.” It also opens their eyes to something else positive for the district (that they can take credit for) that may help with other funding in the future.
Well, I don’t know if this helps, but in British Columbia teachers who are robotics sponsors are paid exactly the same as teachers who are coaches.
But that’s because all extracurricular activities are unpaid and voluntary for public school teachers in BC.
Based on my experience coaching basketball and robotics, there is no doubt in my mind that if a sports coach receives $x then a robotics coach should, too.
For the first seven years, 237 had an unpaid teacher who started the program up. Pal’s travel expenses were paid, no stipend. He then retired.
The 8th year we could not find a teacher, but we could not travel without one. The school adminstration took turns traveling. The team paid the travel expenses.
The 9th year, we got a 1st year teacher involved, the school board came up with $1600 for a stipend, the team paid for travel. He’s gone.
The only thing I know for this year is we have the stipend. No teacher yet.
I’ve moved to a new school since my previous posts, and at 2014 we were approved this year for extra duty contracts commensurate with coaching (my soccer, robotics, and track salaries are all roughly the same).
