Re: Public
 

The Brazilian Machine played with team 5 in 2001 in VCU and Nationals. There are really nice people in this team, always ready to show their robot's features and talk. Their robot was pretty good too (our high score last year happened playing with them)!

Rachel, if you post here the school's e-mail address I'll write to them trying to help your team, but I can't call or write a letter. Please give us the right contact for that purpose.

No FIRST team must end, specially a team with such a low number. If you don't manage to use that room, please do your best to find another one. Some teams work in the garage of one of the students, for example.

Good luck!

school site
 

The school website is http://www.melnap.k12.mi.us/ scroll down to Melvindale High School and click on that. Then click on staff webpages at the top. Then a schoolplanner.com thing will appear on the side of the screen. Scroll down to M. Reynolds and click on my planner. and then email the teacher. he's really the principal though.

:D You guys have some great ideas.

Rachel
Team 5

Something I havent seen anybody mention but can make a big difference...get the city council involved. Sometimes that is possible and sometimes it isnt, but when they say something to the school superintendent...they tend to at least pay a little more attention. Also get some of the science and math teachers on your side, not to mention the technology teachers. Let THEM say how benificial they find this program. Also try to get one or two of them to go to the board meetings. Parents and teachers encouraging something together normally turns into a very effective strategy. You get enough people to stand strong together...and the sports teams dont have as much leverage to stand on.

this gets better
 

OK this gets even better. The whole reason why they want to give up our lab is because of a school bond. Our school is going to bid for a bond so our school can be rebuild. In the process a company came to our school and said they'd give us 2 million dollars worth of exercise equipment. all the school has to do is take measurements and staticistics of the users. So they're trying to act like this will benefit everyone involved. First off, we have a weight room and only the athletes use that and the weight room is suppossedly "opened to anyone". Secondly, the school is valuing free money and athletics over robotics. Just bc we are a minority group at our school. What's the chances of becoming an enginner or an inventor or whatever over being a pro athlete? This is stupid and another example of athletics being favored of education.

School board meeting
 

The next school board meeting is on Tuesday. That means 5 days to prepare what we're going to say and how we're presenting our case in a calm mature manner...even if we are furious. If things don't go well are any MI teams willing to back us up and come protest with us? Thanx for your support again.

Rachel
Team 5

I'll try to round up my team to come on out. E-mail me w/ detail

Abi
 

Thanx alot we appreciate. Again your team has come through for us just like GLR. I'll email you soon with details. If you want you can IM me my sn is Leeroy48122. Hope to talk to you soon.

Rachel
Team 5

Remember to remind the School Board, the Parents of the Football People, and yourselves: GRACIOUS PROFESSIONALISM. Just say that explain why FIRST supports it and all that other stuff, and they will get weak in their knees.

Ironic
 

Matt,

I wish you well and good luck with getting the support that team 5 deserves. You guys are an awesome team and your "ball popper" mechanism that you guys came up with this year was great. If I were in the area, I'd be there to help discuss things with the school board.

But... I just gotta point out the irony in your above post. While you are frustrated with the support for athletics and the weight room situation, your signature and Avatar both enthusiastically support a professional athletic team.

hmmmm....

Andy B.

Re: Ironic
 

Nothing wrong with athletics. I personally could care less about sports, but the thing is that the school is valuing a recreational activity over FIRST. What it comes down to is, as a school, what do they value more: kids having fun WHILE gaining a unique educational expierience that will help them beyond just high school, or simple recreational activities.

BTW, I tried calling just now, but apparently your peeps don't have answering machines. [edit] So, I send Mr. Reynolds a nice e-mail explaining his school's conflict between education and recreation. [/edit]

Im with Joe and every one on this post. I am going to e-mail our regional director with the link to this thread. I'll see what she can do to help. Maybe she can get the ball rolling to get Dean involved...

wish me luck

Gabe

I just sent a very long email to our school principal, hopefully he'll reconsider, If any of you guys wanna check it out just PM me or let me know and I can copy and paste the letter to you.

Matt and Rach.
 

I just got a good idea, how about we bring a bunch or past robotics members who are now engineers????????? Wouldn't that be great, they could tell them how much robotics did for them!!!!!!!!!

Yep, that would also be a great idea. Show 'em just how beneficial the program is. After all, can the sport teams bring in any pro-athletes? :) Actually, I think Harrison suggested something like this when he posted...