Are there any limitations on running tournaments if your club is scholastic? I run a scholastic chess club, but I want to do some family tournaments to get the parents involved (these would be USCF rated). Can I do that if the affiliate is a scholastic affiliate?
Yes you can
My suggestion that if one plans to organize a number of scholastics, whether they also plan on regular events open to all, or not, then the H or scholastic affiliate, for a number of reasons, works best.
Rob Jones
The only real difference between scholastic affiliates and other types of affiliates is that scholastic affiliates can hold K-12 JTP events for the students in their school. Since these are restricted to only the full-time students attending that one school, other types of affiliates are not permitted to run them.
So it comes down to this: Scholastic affiliates are for schools. Is your organization a school? If so, then it should have a scholastic affiliate.
Note that chess training programs or chess camps are not considered full-time schools so they are not eligible to become scholastic affiliates.
Similarly, college clubs should have a college affiliate and prison affiliates should have a prison affiliate. Each state has one state chapter affiliate, so that’s generally not an option for a new affiliate. Otherwise, it is a regular affiliate.
My understanding is that the Board has a committee looking into revising the JTP program, which could result in changing the definitions of what a scholastic affiliate is or what types of affiliates can run K-12 JTP events. At present, any type of affiliate may run a K-3 Primary JTP event, for which the only restriction is that all players, including house players, must be no higher than grade 3.
And note that an event can have a JTP section (or sections) even if it has other sections that are not JTP. So a state all-grade could (as an example) have the kindergarten and second grade sections JTP while the first grade and third through twelfth grades are not JTP. The JTP option only has to be chosen if there are non-members in a section having third grade and/or younger players, so if all of the first graders and third graders are members you do not have to select JTP for their sections even if you potentially allowed non-members in those sections (I expect the number of JTP-eligible sections are under-reported because of this).
Since regular affiliates also get the CL4K magazine I’m guessing the main drivers to getting a scholastic affiliate are: <1> show that it was a school organizing the tournament; <2> being allowed to organize a K-12 in-school JTP tournament (even if it is never done); <3> having a hired chief TD that wants the actual organizer to be the affiliate of record just on the off chance there are any issues with the event (TDs with their own affiliates may want a strong comfort level before using that affiliate ID to submit an event they directed but did not organize).