Insurance???

[geedee]

Teams in California are being told that their school districts must provide insurance:

"The [region] Regional Science Olympiad program directors, in coordination with California State Science Olympiad program directors, the [regional chapter], and [venue] require that your school/district provide us with a "Certificate of Liability Insurance" or "Evidence of Coverage" Certificate in order to attend and participate in the [region] Regional Science Olympiad program being held at one of the dates and venues listed: [place, date]. This certificate of insurance clarifies that your district or insuring agency will provide liability coverage for each team’s participants, including staff and volunteers. Your team may not participate without a correctly completed and received certificate of insurance. If the certificate is not received before the registration deadline, your spot may be given to another school."

Is this just a California thing, or are other states requiring this? We have never been asked this before. I fear this may be the beginning of the end of SO in CA: when the lawyers trump science!

[lumosityfan]

I think this may be just a California thing because here in NJ, we don't have to sign such a form (I think). Also, that's nothing new, I don't think: that's basically just saying that any school who does compete must handle any damages it has to deal with themselves; SO is not liable. SO will be fine in California.

[Entomology]

I believe we've always had this in my region of CA. You can find my county's version of the form here. https://scilympiad.com/data/org/san-die ... %20COI.pdf The form just makes sure that (my school district), "Secondary Science Olympiad, (my county) program directors that your district/school is aware of your school’s participation in this(these) event(s) and authorizes your school’s students to attend the Event Workshop and/or the Division C Regional Competition as listed above. The ‘Certificate’ also assures all involved that the district or insuring agency will provide liability coverage for its school’s participants and district staff who participate in the program."

I'm also pretty sure that this is implemented in a couple other states (Can you even compete without liability release/insurance forms?)
What region specifically are you from in California?

[bearasauras]

Based on the wording, I think geedee is from LA.

[geedee]

We have liability forms too, but the insurance certificate is definitely new to us, and I've been doing this for 5 years now. Our issue is that we are a group of parent volunteers explicitly a non-school-sponsored activity, by agreement with our district, which had a superintendent who was spectacularly unhelpful and deathly afraid of the liability of kids doing real science. You'd think that our schools would be supportive, but we have had to battle with the district over multiple years just to get the principals to sign the form stating that the kids all go to the same school. We thought we finally had reached an understanding with the district last year (we keep doing our thing outside of the school, they sign our form every year), but then this new (to us) requirement came up. Lumosityfan, you're right, it's not the end of SO in CA -- just in our little backwater of a district (which I'll keep nameless for now), which managed to also quash Odyssey of the Mind in 2012 when the school district withdrew support due to liability concerns also.

So I just wanted to see what other states are doing/requiring. Entomology, from the link that you showed, it looks like that's just to attend the workshop and compete at Regionals. I don't see why that would be required, as it seems that the event organizers should have event insurance anyway -- District insurance would only insure district employees and maybe the students, but if a random spectator lost an eye to a stray bottle rocket, that insurance would not cover this.

Thanks for letting me vent!