FIRST in Your School District

[robonerd_842]

Hello teams!!!
I was just wondering if any school district is totally involved in FIRST?
How many schools does your district have involved in FIRST?
And what does your team plan to do to get your entire school district involved in FIRST?

If you all could just let me know I would be grateful! Thanks!
Have a great week!!!

[Billfred]

There are eight high schools in Richland County School District One (A.C. Flora, Columbia, Dreher, Eau Claire, Heyward, C.A. Johnson, Keenan, Lower Richland). Of them, two (Columbia and Keenan) have FRC teams; one is a career center that serves the other seven. The lone charter high school in the district, Richland One Middle College, fielded a team in 2005 and folded afterward. My alma mater, School District Five of Lexington and Richland Counties, fields a combined FRC team for the three schools in the district.

We have no firm plans to push for growth within the district, as we're still trying to establish a stronger presence just within our area. (Richland One is huge.)

[wilsonmw04]

In Goochland County VA, we have a FIRST team in each school. In total, 1 FRC, 1 FTC and 6 FLL's.

[N7UJJ]

The Phoenix Union High School District had 9 schools with FIRST teams this year (note team 2128 was composed of two schools)


Phoenix, AZ, USA 842 Honeywell / Arthur M. Blank Foundation / Science Foundation Arizona / Intel / Vegas Fuel / Wells-Fargo & Carl Hayden High School
Phoenix, AZ, USA 2413 Science Foundation Arizona & Maryvale High School
Phoenix, AZ, USA 2414 Science Foundation of Arizona & Camelback High School
Phoenix, AZ, USA 2365 Science Foundation Arizona & Alhambra High School
Phoenix, AZ, USA 2375 Bioscience High School
Phoenix, AZ, USA 2397 Science Foundation AZ & Phoenix Union Cyber High School
Phoenix, AZ, USA 2128 AM Fab / Arizona Science Foundation & South Mountain High School & Cesar Chavez High School
Phoenix, AZ, USA 2647 Arizona State University & North High School

There are 17 schools in the district, some special programs. We hope to have FRC available in all schools next year.

PUHSD schools:
* Alhambra High School
* Betty H. Fairfax High School
* Bioscience High School
* Bostrom Alternative Center
* Camelback High School
* Carl Hayden Community High School
* Central High School
* Cesar Chavez High School
* Cyber High School
* Desiderata Program
* Franklin Police and Fire High School
* Maryvale High School
* Metro Tech High School
* North High School
* South Mountain High School
* Suns-Diamondbacks Education Academy
* Trevor G. Browne High School

[Stephi Rae]

1 FRC team, and as of this year, we started 1 FLL team. Also 1 FLL team at a local private school. Pretty much nothing in the neighboring districts as well. We hope this will change soon.

[Sean Schuff]

The Appleton Area School District has three high schools, all of which have students on the NEW (Appleton North, Appleton East, Appleton West) Apple Corps Robotics Team. We've been that way from our beginnings 12 years ago. Were we to grow into a larger team I'm sure we would split and form multiple teams but at present this is the most cost effective, functional way to run the team.

The NEW Apple Corps and FIRST Robotics was the inspiration for the formation of Tesla Engineering Charter School (http://www.aasd.k12.wi.us/tesla) within our district. The school is home to 97 students (119 next year) who have an interest in learning more about engineering and technology and plan to pursue post-secondary education in engineering. The school also has an after-school class (for credit) that introduces new team members to what FIRST and our team are all about and gives the returning members the opportunity to prep for the upcoming season. We've followed the Husky Brigades mantra from a few years back - "It's a year round thing!"

Great to see what others have done in their districts!

[Cow Bell Solo]

We have 2 high schools in our district and both are combined into one FRC team(one school is 9, and 10 the other is 11, and 12). We have 2 middle schools and there is no FLL team(s). We might try to get one started in the next couple of years being that our team started last year and have a small active team. (At least I would like to see a FLL team started in the next couple of years)

[cwood]

In my school district there are: 2 high schools 2 middle schools and i believe 10 elementary schools. So far in our fourth year team 1629(which draws students from both high schools) has set up 5 Lego league teams for the two middle schools. We also run tech camps that are open to any student down to grade 1. By running these all summer we have been able to reach an amazing number of students.

Our school board is completely behind us on all of these activities. They're our largest contributor for the FRC program and contribute money and mentors to every team in the county. Our Principals and Superintendent have attended almost every FRC competition even traveling to Atlanta. Once our superintendent dress up as our mascot for a banquet. This almost fanatical backing of FIRST programs has lead us to spread FIRST to our neighboring districts with a team started in Morgantown WV (2614 Pitts Champs), and a planned team for next year in Allegany county MD. Our Road Map for rural teams (a list of steps to making FIRST a success in a rural area) emphasizes the importance of a strong backing from the school system and administrators.

It really has been the key to our success as well as our Engineering Inspiration Award

[mrs. p]

this year, our superintendent "gets it". He has grasped onto what FIRST can do for the students, the schools and the community. he would like to see an FRC team (or perhaps FTC) at every high school. currently, we have 8 FRC teams in our county with all schools (private, public and home schoolers) having the opportunity to join. We have several FTC teams and that is where i see the most growth occurring. Team 233 established the state Lego tournament for Florida, held in our county,many years ago and our team continues to sponsor, ref, judge, and volunteer at it since turning it over to someone else to run (i.e. raise funds and organize). we have about 4 - 6 local tournaments and even a JFLL tournament.

with the support of our superintendent, he is providing stipends to all teachers involved and sponsoring in some way lego, ftc and frc teams, i expect to see continued growth in our community.

[Scott Carpman]

There are 1,450 schools in my district. Needless to say not all of them have teams..yet.

[DRH2o]

Danville Public Schools has two high schools and both have FRC Teams mostly funded by the school system. We are very lucky -- great support from the top down.:)

[Littleswimmer14]

In the Milwaukee Public School system there are 4 schools involved

Rufus King and Bradley Tech form 1675
Bay View High School is 2547
Washington High School is 1268

So far that's it but our superintendent did stop by during the Wisconsin Regional, so we are hoping on getting more students involved next year ^_^

[Sunbun]

1197 welcomes students from four of the five Torrance Unified School District high schools (South, North, West, and Torrance High). The fifth is a continuation school.

So far, I'd say more than 3/4 of the club consists of South students, and the rest from the other three high schools.

[jus_me_d]

My school district (Tulsa Public Schools) has about 15 high schools but only 2 of them are involved with FIRST, both through FRC. Every school in the district has its own specialty program of sorts. For example my school is an engineering academy. So it is harder to get other schools involved, but we are working on it. We are also hoping to bring a couple FLL teams to our district next season.

But there are 5 total school districts within about a 10 to 20 mile radius of each other. Of those 5 districts 4 of them have at least one FRC team. We are hoping to bring the 5th district into FIRST through FRC next year.

[laultima]

Every school in our district has a robotics team, including two local private schools, and a brand new high school. They are:
Monte Vista High School - 1458
San Ramon Valley High School - 1280
California High School - 1516
The Athenian School - 852
De La Salle High School - 2141
Dougherty Valley High School - 2390

[Cactus_Robotics]

The Phoenix Union High School District had 9 schools with FIRST teams this year (note team 2128 was composed of two schools)


Phoenix, AZ, USA 842 Honeywell / Arthur M. Blank Foundation / Science Foundation Arizona / Intel / Vegas Fuel / Wells-Fargo & Carl Hayden High School
Phoenix, AZ, USA 2413 Science Foundation Arizona & Maryvale High School
Phoenix, AZ, USA 2414 Science Foundation of Arizona & Camelback High School
Phoenix, AZ, USA 2365 Science Foundation Arizona & Alhambra High School
Phoenix, AZ, USA 2375 Bioscience High School
Phoenix, AZ, USA 2397 Science Foundation AZ & Phoenix Union Cyber High School
Phoenix, AZ, USA 2128 AM Fab / Arizona Science Foundation & South Mountain High School & Cesar Chavez High School
Phoenix, AZ, USA 2647 Arizona State University & North High School

There are 17 schools in the district, some special programs. We hope to have FRC available in all schools next year.

PUHSD schools:
* Alhambra High School
* Betty H. Fairfax High School
* Bioscience High School
* Bostrom Alternative Center
* Camelback High School
* Carl Hayden Community High School
* Central High School
* Cesar Chavez High School
* Cyber High School
* Desiderata Program
* Franklin Police and Fire High School
* Maryvale High School
* Metro Tech High School
* North High School
* South Mountain High School
* Suns-Diamondbacks Education Academy
* Trevor G. Browne High School

Its really horrible that our school and school district doesnt support our team.. I guess thats how it is when the school puts all effort and money into is sports. Its good to see some support from a school district in Arizona. Good Job.

[David Noll]

Its really horrible that our school and school district doesnt support our team.. I guess thats how it is when the school puts all effort and money into is sports.

My school does the same thing but don't let them. Our school wont let us edit our website, doesn't support the program, and every time something goes wrong in the computer system we get called to the office and blamed for that mess.
At the same time, through the efforts of the students and our mentors (mostly them), have gotten 2 FRC teams at our highschool, 2 FTC teams (one in highschool, one in middle school), 4 FLL teams in our middle schools and a budding JFLL (elementary school) program that has one team to date and should be growing to 5 next year.
We have found that this is a great way of getting members for the FRC teams, if the kids start doing FIRST when they are 6 by the time they are 16 it won't be a question as to what they are doing on the first weekend of January, kick-off. It's just like cigarette companies, hook 'em while their young...

[falconmaster]

Its really horrible that our school and school district doesnt support our team.. I guess thats how it is when the school puts all effort and money into is sports. Its good to see some support from a school district in Arizona. Good Job.

Do you want us to help you start a campaign to get more schools in your district on board. We can make a presentation or help you make a presentation to you school board or other schools in your district? Our goal is to make it embarrassing in Arizona to be a high school and not have a robotics team. We can't do it alone though, we need as many teams out there as possible to join in the cause! The worst they can say is no and then what have you lost?

[falconmaster]

My school does the same thing but don't let them. Our school wont let us edit our website, doesn't support the program, and every time something goes wrong in the computer system we get called to the office and blamed for that mess.
At the same time, through the efforts of the students and our mentors (mostly them), have gotten 2 FRC teams at our highschool, 2 FTC teams (one in highschool, one in middle school), 4 FLL teams in our middle schools and a budding JFLL (elementary school) program that has one team to date and should be growing to 5 next year.
We have found that this is a great way of getting members for the FRC teams, if the kids start doing FIRST when they are 6 by the time they are 16 it won't be a question as to what they are doing on the first weekend of January, kick-off. It's just like cigarette companies, hook 'em while their young...

Go to the school board and get support from the top down. Invite the board members to your school, let them drive the bot, make sure the Newspaper is there. More exposure causes political types to want to do the right thing, especially if they don't have to do that much to make it happen. They love to let you make them look good. Try it!

[falconmaster]

Is there any Major metropolitan city that has their whole school district at the FRC level involved with FIRST? Our city is Phoenix an I think we are the 6th largest city in the US. I could be wrong. Just trying to see the FIRST proliferation going on here.

[zachjo]

we have two different high schools right now. Two students from each. Next year we hope to bump our numbers up by doing more demos and doing a robotics club/class once a week at a high school.

[Cactus_Robotics]

Do you want us to help you start a campaign to get more schools in your district on board. We can make a presentation or help you make a presentation to you school board or other schools in your district? Our goal is to make it embarrassing in Arizona to be a high school and not have a robotics team. We can't do it alone though, we need as many teams out there as possible to join in the cause! The worst they can say is no and then what have you lost?

Another problem we have is we've tried to go around to other schools started one at Ironwood team 898 a few years ago but the team fell apart because of lack of student interest and the teacher who was doing it would control all of the decisions, he didnt quite get what FIRST was about. The other schools have no teacher that wanna step up.

[falconmaster]

All you need is to find one crazy teacher!

[Mr. Lim]

Fredi,

I believe (but don't quote me) the single school board with the highest participation is the Toronto District School Board with 21 schools:

2505 Don Mills Collegiate Institute / St. Andrew's Junior High School
1246 Agincourt CI
188 Woburn Collegiate Institute
865 Western Technical-Commercial School
1814 Northview Heights SS
1815 Sir John A Macdonald CI
1310 Runnymede CI
1835 RH King Academy
854 Martingrove C. I.
1404 Dr Norman Bethune CI
907 East York Collegiate Institute
1514 West Humber CI
919 Harbord CI
2670 York Memorial Collegiate High School
2076 Thistletown Collegiate Institute
1558 Albert Campbell CI
1564 A.Y. Jackson SS
2185 Etobicoke Collegiate Institute
1605 George Harvey CI
2198 L'Amoreaux C.I
1219 Emery Collegiate Institute

The high participation is largely due to a funding formula that was developed and championed by Mark Breadner, former Computer Science teacher at Woburn CI, former Regional Director of the Canadian Regional, GTR WFFA 2007, and now a vice-principal in the TDSB.

The TDSB has a funding incentive program that makes starting a team a much smaller barrier. The justification at the school board level isn't too tricky: for the fraction of what it costs the board to fund a football team, schools can have a robotics team, where kids can learn career relevant skills, ALONG with a lot of the same competitive character building traits that conventional sports offered.

The side effect is that robotics teams now outnumber football teams in the TDSB, I believe.

As an aside, the TDSB includes only PUBLIC schools in the actual city of Toronto (no suburbs). There are many more Catholic school teams and private school teams, as well surrounding Greater Toronto Area teams.

Overall, we are seeing a stronger trend of school boards jumping on board the funding wagon, which I believe is a good thing. Corporate sponsorship will always be (and should be) the primary driving force behind FRC, but school board financial support should never be discounted. If they're already willing to support sports teams, then why not FIRST?

[David Noll]

Low and behold Canada funds science and technology, as well as academic progress, above sports. Be patient with us guys, our bureaucrats will figure it out in a decade or so. But definitely start at the top to try and get support. My team is 8 years old (if I'm wrong Hobin, shush) and we kept trying to work our way up, I recently found out the superintendent seriously enjoys and supports the program. Guess who we are going to meet with after Atlanta?
Moreover, if you don't have a big muckitty-muck that supports FIRST then go to the BOE, parents and teachers that care about education will complain FOR you until someone up above writes a check or comes to take a look. Every year Dean tells us to spread the message through media and politicians, but why don't we spread the idea through education? We educate kids on how to live and make good decisions, I kind of think that this program is a good decision.

[falconmaster]

Fredi,

I believe (but don't quote me) the single school board with the highest participation is the Toronto District School Board with 21 schools:

2505 Don Mills Collegiate Institute / St. Andrew's Junior High School
1246 Agincourt CI
188 Woburn Collegiate Institute
865 Western Technical-Commercial School
1814 Northview Heights SS
1815 Sir John A Macdonald CI
1310 Runnymede CI
1835 RH King Academy
854 Martingrove C. I.
1404 Dr Norman Bethune CI
907 East York Collegiate Institute
1514 West Humber CI
919 Harbord CI
2670 York Memorial Collegiate High School
2076 Thistletown Collegiate Institute
1558 Albert Campbell CI
1564 A.Y. Jackson SS
2185 Etobicoke Collegiate Institute
1605 George Harvey CI
2198 L'Amoreaux C.I
1219 Emery Collegiate Institute

The high participation is largely due to a funding formula that was developed and championed by Mark Breadner, former Computer Science teacher at Woburn CI, former Regional Director of the Canadian Regional, GTR WFFA 2007, and now a vice-principal in the TDSB.

The TDSB has a funding incentive program that makes starting a team a much smaller barrier. The justification at the school board level isn't too tricky: for the fraction of what it costs the board to fund a football team, schools can have a robotics team, where kids can learn career relevant skills, ALONG with a lot of the same competitive character building traits that conventional sports offered.

The side effect is that robotics teams now outnumber football teams in the TDSB, I believe.

As an aside, the TDSB includes only PUBLIC schools in the actual city of Toronto (no suburbs). There are many more Catholic school teams and private school teams, as well surrounding Greater Toronto Area teams.

Overall, we are seeing a stronger trend of school boards jumping on board the funding wagon, which I believe is a good thing. Corporate sponsorship will always be (and should be) the primary driving force behind FRC, but school board financial support should never be discounted. If they're already willing to support sports teams, then why not FIRST?

Fantastic!! Hope we get there soon!!

[Cactus_Robotics]

All you need is to find one crazy teacher!

Agreed.

[Vince lau]

Fredi,

I believe (but don't quote me) the single school board with the highest participation is the Toronto District School Board with 21 schools:

2505 Don Mills Collegiate Institute / St. Andrew's Junior High School
1246 Agincourt CI
188 Woburn Collegiate Institute
865 Western Technical-Commercial School
1814 Northview Heights SS
1815 Sir John A Macdonald CI
1310 Runnymede CI
1835 RH King Academy
854 Martingrove C. I.
1404 Dr Norman Bethune CI
907 East York Collegiate Institute
1514 West Humber CI
919 Harbord CI
2670 York Memorial Collegiate High School
2076 Thistletown Collegiate Institute
1558 Albert Campbell CI
1564 A.Y. Jackson SS
2185 Etobicoke Collegiate Institute
1605 George Harvey CI
2198 L'Amoreaux C.I
1219 Emery Collegiate Institute

The high participation is largely due to a funding formula that was developed and championed by Mark Breadner, former Computer Science teacher at Woburn CI, former Regional Director of the Canadian Regional, GTR WFFA 2007, and now a vice-principal in the TDSB.

The TDSB has a funding incentive program that makes starting a team a much smaller barrier. The justification at the school board level isn't too tricky: for the fraction of what it costs the board to fund a football team, schools can have a robotics team, where kids can learn career relevant skills, ALONG with a lot of the same competitive character building traits that conventional sports offered.

The side effect is that robotics teams now outnumber football teams in the TDSB, I believe.

As an aside, the TDSB includes only PUBLIC schools in the actual city of Toronto (no suburbs). There are many more Catholic school teams and private school teams, as well surrounding Greater Toronto Area teams.

Overall, we are seeing a stronger trend of school boards jumping on board the funding wagon, which I believe is a good thing. Corporate sponsorship will always be (and should be) the primary driving force behind FRC, but school board financial support should never be discounted. If they're already willing to support sports teams, then why not FIRST?

now to try and get the York Region District school board to do the same thing