Phokaioglaukos

Ok, I admit it, I am a lawyer in a 1,000+ lawyer international firm. I just called one of my tax partners who says not to worry. The discount is to encourage participation, not compensation. He said that when he goes to an ABA meeting to sit on a panel his conference fee is waived and he does not get a 1099. Same situation, so don't worry.

M758

Two students is really alot. Far too much in my opinion if you have 4 sessions a day. Personally I hated two students since there was never a time I was not either in the car or just out of the car waiting to get in the car. Overworked instructors will tend to just sit there vs doing all they can.

Now if you have so many students you that you need instructors to carry two your ratios are all off. Most places perfer a 1 to 1 ratio of students to instructors. Most like to have the same student over the entire weekend. Most give some meaning full discount (or free entry) to instructors. If you can't get enough instructors then the incentive is not great enough.

A good region will have a generious instructor program and then be able to limit who instructs. This means a pool of instructors that is greater than the students. Then the region can be selective on the guys that do the best job. Good regions also keep a close eye on each instructor and make sure the right one get the discounts. I feel this is perferable to over worked instructors.


Think of it this way... Good instructors are way to attact new drivers. They are a selling point on your event vs the competition. How do you get and retain the best instructors? You compensate them. For tracks that compesation is easy... cheap track time. The region needs to model it costs so that it can provide cheap track time to instructors and still cover total event costs. BTW.. many places have an high fee (10-20) to cover the instructor lead groups. Part of this is to help cover the extra work it takes to manage instructors.

M758

This is one big reason paid corner workers are valueable in DE. 35 mintues for each change over is stupid. That is almost 2 run groups. NASA around here is very good at maximizing usable track time. Basicly from a $$ persective you can "sell" track time when the track is hot. So take the number of hours in a day 8am to 5pm and figure how many 20 minute sessions can you stuff in. Then figure how many cars you can get on track in each session. That is your max revenue. Any time the track is cold you can't have cars on the track. This is wasted time. Plus paid corner works are professionals to some extent. These guys know how to manage the corner. Volunteers are just not like that. I corner worked for a PCA club race years. Ago. I needed a training session and was teamed up with an experineced SCCA corner worked (he was paid, and I got some cheap track time on another day). It is not easy.


Autocross works fine for working corners since the track is short and most corner workers just **** cones anyway.. Big difference comparing to flying into a blind coner at 100 mph relying on the corner worker to tell you if something bad is around the bend.

M758

How could their be. The guys are not being PAID... are just not paying as much for track time. Completely non-cash transaction. Any business has the right to provide reduced fee services for any reason.

smlporsche

Good points. That's why I don't run DE's for a living.

In that case just have 2 pay structures; one for Instructors and one for everyone else. That's what most clubs do around here. I was just trying to get the OP a little more comfortable with reducing the Instructors fee.

APKhaos

Joe,
If you're trying to build a case to present to your Exec, then you might want to try this:
- Contact Pete Tremper [National DE Chair - tremper9146@aol.com] for input on this as well.
- Contact the CIs or DE Chairs of clubs with a similar size DE program to your region, and get their pricing policy details
- Enlist the help of you Zone Rep to gather this info.

As much as the input here is valuable confirmation of your case, your board is more likely to listen to data provided by other regions running similar DE programs. I suspect that most of these will have wrestled with same problem at some point, and developed policies that work.
Pete Tremper is a terrific resource, and if anyone can help you get this done Pete will.

I can tell you that regions like mine that run large DE programs have to work hard to maintain a strong instructor corps. Its a constant process, and at some point the number of available instructors can be a limiting factor on filling events in the instructed run groups.

M758

Yes... Contact Pete Tremper and leverage him. Great resouce for PCA DE's.

Bill N

Good one, thanks Chris.

race911

Tracquest..............many other benefits that went along with one of Todd's events besides the actual driving.

I've not paid to instruct out here for several years. BMWCCA even comps 50% of your hotel room (fully, if you share), and whatever dinner they may do. All the other groups are for-profit (though we know that's a lofty goal), and manage to figure it all out.

As Tom mentioned, GGR has the absurd "worker fee". When I was on the board 10 years ago I attempted to point out the fallacy; that there was a small, but significant, portion of revenue that came from entrants paying this fee without regard for what they were actually paying third parties to perform event work (e.g. corner workers).

JR944

Thanks DarkSide, I couldn't have stated my opinion any more clearly than you just did. This is done at some regions on the East coast and I strongly disagree with it. Nobody, including instructors, can't use some instruction. I sure don't want to differentiate and give folks the idea that they're ALL DONE with having instruction.

Hi Joe, I agree with everything else you wrote, but don't know what you're talking about here "have an high fee (10-20) to cover the instructor lead groups."

Thanks Tony, I agree with you entirely as well. The board doesn't question the veracity of my statements of fact. I've served as CDI of two other regions, filled-in as substitute CDI of another, did a stint as PCA Zone 10 Rep, and have attended DE's with at least 11 regions. The challenge, as I've had with all the changes I've tried to implement is the "We've never done it that way before" attitude. I'll get there. It just takes time to overcome such hurdles.

Pete is a friend. He and I spent quite a bit of time together at Parade discussing the changes I'm trying to implement locally. Had a very good meeting with our region President and Pete was very helpful.

IMO, the concern of tax-ability of an instructor discount is a non-issue.

Thanks again for the input guys,

Joe

dew-e

I've instructed for three different Florida PCA chapters, PBOC, and CHIN. I've never paid more than 45$ for a full weekend, and I've never had more than 1 student at a time. I have had situations where a student was advanced to solo after a check ride and then I had to pick up another student, but I've never had one novice student and one intermediate/advanced student at the same time.

All of the events that I go to, there are usually floating "advanced" instructors to do things like check rides or help out with the OSB drivers that are out there.

In Florida I wouldn't instruct with a group that had multiple students assigned to the same instructor, or any group that doesn't offer basically free track time. It is to hot to have multiple students, and paying virtually nothing is the standard. As a student, I would feel cheated if I didn't have a dedicated instructor. Part of the teaching experience is what you do in the paddock between sessions. How do you spend the proper amount of time with the student if you have to run from one student car to another? Just to run to your car the next, repeat.. The instructor is going to be exhausted and the quality of instruction and safety of the event would be compromised. My hat off to those instructors that can do a good job of instructing in that kind of environment.

I guess we are spoiled in Florida.

M758

Often times "School" pays $20 more than just "regular DE". School group is always instructred and include classroom.

So you can sign-up with.

- School
- DE
- instructor

All novices are required to take the school. You are novice if you the region has no history of you or if you are new to the track with limited experineced. School group always gets instructors. The regular DE groups may or not get an instructor depending on the needs. Yes there are multilple levels, but since the partcipants get something extra (classroom) for that $20 it gives it value.

If it is not worth the hassle for your region fine. It was just a way to help offset the lower instructor costs by charging those that will be using instructors slightly more.

DarkSideDE

Me again. I can remember the local region's concerns for how much we were charging -- we were lucky, we had two other PCA regions at the same track and had all their info to use as we needed it.

One thing that came up - was the original DEs were for 100 people - 20 in each run group. Knowing we needed more than 20 instructors, we put the spillover from Red into Black. Then we realized we needed to charge a little something to make up for those full-price spots going for $75. (Hey, it was a long while ago.) So we "taxed" non-PCA folks. The original DE went like this:
PCA Members: $175
Non-PCA: $200
Instructors: $75

Prices have come up over the years, but honestly not as much as inflation has hit all of us. The only reason it did go up was because all expenses at the track went up....

Now the moral is, if you can't get enough PCA members out there to help you fill up and pay the tab - go out and be nice to the other marques - and you can charge them a bit more to make up for the instructors who you are not charging full price too... or something like that.

BTW - Even in those days we tried to treat the instructors as nice as possible so they'd always want to come back. Aiming for one student per instructor. Asking an instructor if they want two (hey, some do!) or would they mind helping with a second if needed. Giving them lunch each day - dinner at night. And just being nice in general.

***********
Change topic back to charge more for someone having an instructor:

Still scary about wanting to charge someone more for the privilege of having an instructor. Another thought, what if an advance just wants an instructor to ride along for a session - do you charge them too? Just too many fine lines there for an organization to work with - and too many people finding ways not to pay the additional amount.


Thanks again for letting me add an opinion without you ripping me to shreds. This is becoming a positive experience around here and very much appreciated.

Patrick E

Slightly OT, but Jackie's Dark Side group certainly knows how to take care of instructors (no affiliation but a satisifed customer).

jaje

Most of the events I instruct at are either free or significantly reduced (>50%). I would not instruct for a Sat/Sun session if I had to pay - just too much of my time gone as I don't neglect the students and want to work with them - leaving me little to no time to go out in my sessions. I wind up taking many students for rides anyway. I would only pay if there was a full day of track time dedicated (such as a Friday) to instructors and some advanced students.

On the other hand some clubs are not for profit (such as Audi Club) and you can deduct your expenses if you instructed at their events.