Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

They gave us the old weight room to work in. It's a fairly large space. Only downfall is the leaky roof, which is not good for electronics.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

i am one of the two students from my team that got to go to the white house with our robot. It hasnt increased support in my school for robotics that much. We got an article in the school newspaper and segment on the daily tv news at our school. my school basically gives us the shop (vertical and horizontal band saws, table saw, drill presses, oven, power miter box; all of which were meant for wood which we had to outfit with new blades for metal + a 3 in 1 lathe drillpress mill which the team went 75-25(we paid 75%) on buying it with the school), CAD lab , a closet, some trophy cases in obscure locations where not many people go, and about $500. we also hosted an FTC regional qualifying event(~15 teams) in gym and the school let use its power carts (power for basically 200+ laptops used for standardized testing) and the adminstration was reasonably helpful. However we still lack teachers support. Most teachers are too busy with other clubs and their own work. We have the CAD teacher who lends us his room, and thats about it. We are extremely lucky to have the mentors that we do.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

our school really gets excited about our team .... people who arent on the team can be seen walking around with our team gear on.
Its pretty sweet:)

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

We recieve no support. At all.

Yay for California budget crisis.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

Our team is a combination of all the high schools in our county since our county is small. we have approximately 400 kids at each school, the majority of them not even knowing or caring about the team at all. Of our 15 students on the team, my high school has provided 7 of them. My high school is pretty supportive of it. Like, when the Engineering Program that is offered through the vocational school in our county does a presentation at my high school, they allow us to bring our demo/practice bot to show off and we bring a sign up sheet to get more potential students. And at Open House they let us bring the robot too to show off. But that's about the extent of the publicity of the team at my high school other than word of mouth. The other schools in the county don't publicize the team that much either.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

Since we're not tied to any specific school, and just the Madison area, We don't get monetary support as far as I know. We do get a sizable display case where we keep our 2008 robot and a sit-ski, but the majority of our funding comes from sponsors and the summer camp we run.*



*Disclaimer: I'm not involved with team finances.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

I have been a parent helping the team for 8 years & now do it as a volunteer & Mentor. The team is split between 2 schools. As a lot of you know, we host the FIRST preseason Suffield Shakedown scrimmage. Suffield is gracious enough to supply the Gym & most of the school for the scrimmage. We totally take over the school on that Saturday, filling every available parking spot on sight. Janitors are supplied for both Friday night set-up & all of Saturday. The team regularly post messages on the Marque in the Cafe Commons area keeping the school up to date. Windsor Locks supplies classroom, a dedicated machine shop & practice room, and access to the comp lab & wood shop. They also help fund bus fees and other expenses. Mind you it is an ongoing battle to keep them in the loop & interested in the team. One day my goal is to have a sign erected at each school showing support of the teams. Last year, the computer science teacher retired after serving over at least 35 years in Suffield. It was touch & go as to whether there would be a Suffield teacher representing, but it was fulfilled & the teacher is a willing & energetic mentor.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

I'd like to say our school supports the team quite well:

- Our coach is the only engineering teacher at the school
- Our room is his classroom, where we have access to the school CAD lab (not the most powerful computers, but they all come with the software on them)
- The school helped us convert the old photography darkroom into our workroom
- We've got virtually unlimited access to the school's metal shop, woodshop, and welding (the welding teacher helps us out on occasion too)

The only thing we're actually lacking from the school is financial support and widespread recognition throughout the school.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

We almost didn't have a team this year due to a lack of financial sponsors, and now we've got more support from the school than we've had since I joined the team 4 years ago. Most of the administration is aware of our presence and needs, the school district's foundation has given us money, and will continue to do so, the school has promised to work more closely with us. They even want us to meet year-round and do other non-FIRST projects, such as working with the middle-school to gain interest or showcasing robots at community events. Even the janitors are working with us more than before. With the unfortunate cutting of most of the school's vocational programs, we have access to more rooms (though we lost access to a few due to district storage taking old rooms).

Overall, we're starting to get the support from our school that we need to promote and expand the robotics program, and we're really excited for it.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

my school woodlawn high does not support the team till the team wins a competition. they then support us with transportation.::safety::

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

NOne what so ever.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

Sadly, our school district does not fund our robotics team in any way shape or form, I think that the only people that get extra money during the robotics season are the maintenance workers that stay later than normal. ::ouch::

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

At our school, we barely get a room some years we have a room to build in, but at the end of everyday everything needs to be taken out of it, otherwise some of our build parts will be stolen by the class that is in there the next day. We only have support by one of our science teachers at the school, and we just got a new Engineering teacher this year, and he seems to be a little enthusiastic about robotics. Our school officially gives us nothing, yet seems to come up with 10k for the debate and speech teams, yes that means both of those teams get 10k each for a total of 20k... Even after we won the Minnesota regional, the school barely acknowledges us. We got some certificate and then we were pushed back off into the corner again where we don't get any support. They tell us "We want you to be part of our school, but we don't want to give you anything you are completely on your own, as a matter of fact we would rather use your money for other programs." When they told our sponsor that, we almost didn't have a sponsor this year because they were deeply offended by almost not getting to choose where their money goes.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

Our team doesn't really get school recognition. We've used our 'bot a couple times during school assemblies, but the school is quite frankly more interested in sports. The administration doesn't quite understand the joys of robotics, except a few choice teacher's who support us and think we're a "cool idea". We get no monetary support what so ever.

What we DO have, and what we are INSANELY LUCKY to have, is an amazing mentor/coach who also happens to be be the robotics teacher at the school.

Sal puts in countless hours of his own, and during build season his class room and metal shop basically become our headquarters. This is to the point that at the end of the day he has to remind us, "Hey, I teach a class in here, too! Clean up after yourselves a bit." But because Sal puts so much time into FRC, we can usually stay at the shop until late hours of the night (being nine, ten, my-wife-just-called-you-have-to-leave), and we would never be able to do this without his commitment.

Sal does everything he can to get us school recognition. The school doesn't really like it, but after a year and a half of rallying for it Sal got it so we can get a Varsity Letter in Robotics! It's awesome.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

Team 175 Buzz Robotics is completely independent from Enrico Fermi High School financially. We must use and purchase our own equipment, however we have been given a classroom for our use. Other than the use of the facilities, the school does not support us at all financially, along with the fact that no one is aware of us.

We are solely supported and sponsored by Hamilton Sundstrand.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

Our school district, Lee's Summit, is a fantastic supporter of FIRST. Every elementary school had an FLL team this year and there is a bond issue coming soon that will fund a facility for two of the three district robotics teams including an addition to house a full field and access to the wood and metal shops.

Our team also has a display case in the school and several bulletin boards. In addition to participating in our school's assemblies our principal even flew out to Atlanta last year.

I feel that our team is really privelaged to have this much support.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

Echos post above (same district)

Our school doesn't do bulletin boards, but we got the display case at school for the first month of the year. It's basically a glass-walled classroom-sized room that everyone going in the front entrance sees.

The district also seems really good about providing teachers as mentors.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

Our school allows us to use the metal shop and tools. The school system is suportive, however we recieve little recognition from fellow students, outside of our friends not much is known about our team exept for the odviuse towering robots in the tech department, and the fact that we have a giant robotic arm (no idea where it came from but its realy cool, we took out the sealing once).

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

Our school provides a small amount of money, a great tech lab that we can use whenever we want (it's our Team Leader's classroom), and we are well known amongst the students and faculty, even if it is only because we hold food sales to raise funds.:rolleyes: All-in-all, I would say that we get a good deal of support for our Team, but we're still working on getting more recognition.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

I'm really not sure how to feel about the support our team gets.

Our school is small (~260 kids grades 7-12), and the administration has been helpful whenever we need it. Although not financially supportive at all, our director has been supportive throughout, helping us contact other schools for potential team members and helping us figure out how to be financially independent, keeping track of our own finances as opposed to going through the school (which becomes very beauroucratic). Our teachers have been supportive, with one mentoring us (his mentorship is no longer hands on, but he continues to help greatly with organization and networking), and most teachers acknowledging the challenges of the build season and helping us out (extensions on assignments during the final build week, etc).

However, as far as student support goes, our team is next to nothing. Everyone in the school is well aware of our existence, yet doesn't give us a second thought. The school is well on its way to recognizing FRC as a sport within our school community, however the students don't care. Our cheerleaders, despite our reminding them of how FRC is technically a sport in our school, or on a same level, have flat-out refused to cheer at our competitions, because we're viewed as too geeky or nerdy for them.

Oh well. I'm incredibly grateful for our administration's support, especially in helping us become more independent of our school specifically and work more as a collective of different schools. As for the student body, they'll come around with time.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

Unfortunately, living in a redneck podunk town results in a very sports-centered school district.

The most "funding" our school will give us is permission to sell ice cream at lunch and we even get complaints from teachers about that because kids eat ice cream during lunch.

(facepalm.)
North Idaho sucks.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

Many teams start off like this. Don't let social conventions get you down. Keep at it, and eventually things do change. :) We started off in a town full of farmland, we're now the most respected program in our district. It takes time, but you will live through wonderful changes in your town.

We started off with 6 students and a shop teacher in an unheated wood shop room. No tools, no heat, and no power lead to strong efforts. We now have upwards of 100+ students, teachers, and mentors on our team, access to a robotics lab, metal shop, and a wood shop in the school. The district also funds our first regional and kit. They also support our team's districtwide robotics curriculum for K-12 students.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

I agree, same school. Hah.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

I've read the "stipend" threads as much as I can and I haven't seen this particular perspective addressed.

I agree that teachers should get a stipend from the school consistent with whatever is being provided to an athletic coach, band director, drama teacher or what have you.

What do you think about paying that teacher out of your corporate donations or other raised funds? Do you think your donators would agree that this is what they donated their money to support? Where do you draw the line or define the policy that your treasury can be spent on? Do you review those policies with your donators or do they tend to not ask questions about where the money goes?

I'm very interested in the community's take on this. I'm kind of new to all this and would like to level set my perspective with other's experience.

Thank you,

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

If you have ever seen our pit, it has a big sign over it. We do a new one each year.



If you ever saw the movie "The Jones'es" - it was filmed at Kell, these folks are actors. They are over 18 pretending to be high school aged hipsters. Look down the hall to the left at the wall clock.




Now look down the hall at the same clock as above - see the sign just past the clock :



So there you go, another sign, similiar to the one in the 1st photo. The sign was not installed into the school until after the movie was shot.



These banners and the sign is about as prominent as anything can be placed at this school. We have moral support, now we are working on the teacher incentive. That is a county issue.

.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

Our team has been fortunate enough to have supported our school instead the past two years with technology, other teaching resources, and donations to community events. :)

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

Wow, compared to most of the teams here, I think we are pretty lucky.

Space:
Team 2134 is mainly student run, but we do have a teacher who is "in charge". As a teacher, he teaches the drafting, tech, autotech, and engineering classes. He is still pretty new to everything FIRST, so we are learning together. Becuase he is involved in all these classes, we have a moderately powerful computer lab (used for programming and CAD), a small machine shop (mainly for woodworking, but some metal working machines), and a storage closet (tools and robot materials) at our our disposal. Everything is indoors and connected to each other, which is a huge plus. However, we share everything with our school so we are expected to completely clean up, and share our storage space with really old computers.

Financial:
As of now, we don't receive any direct support (like a friendly $5k for registration) from our school, but we are hoping to change that. We recently changed principals, and I intend to ask him where he stands about FIRST (read our team). While we don't receive any direct support, our main mentor/teacher mentioned above works wonders with the ruling class (read district office) and managed to score a milling machine, lathe, and small 3D printer! All of our finances are managed through a club account, which is very cumbersome to use (see other threads for what I mean). We get about 20% of our finances from outside sources, 70% from club dues and tax credit, and 10% from fundraisers.

School response:
Since our rookie season in 2007, our team has had about 10-20 members. The majority are freshmen who don't have a reputation/social life/AP classes to worry about. We usually start with 30, but just like in Sparta the build season weeds out the "weak". If you ask any non-robotics student at my school, there is a 98% chance that they not know that there is a robotics club at our school, let alone the purpose of FIRST. Most of the students that attend our fundraisers are either from our team, or college alumni. This is mainly our fault as our team doesn't want to demonstrate at our school assemblies (our robot is so beat up, that our club officers are ashamed to show it off.), and that we don't have a presence at school events (save for the freshmen orientation, the reason for our high ratio of freshmen to upperclassmen).
Some of my teachers show an interest in FIRST(chemistry, math), but we still have to ask them if they could help out.
I don't think our administration knows we exist...yet.

Our companion school (our team consists of two high schools) seems to have the situation the other way around. They have very little workable space, almost a negative financial response from their school, but a great response from their student body.

I wish you luck...and hope to see you compete next year.
Daniel D.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

Our school is home to the world champion TARC rocketry team. They went to Paris France last year and won Worlds for America. Our school gives them 0$.

We are usually fortunate enough to get just the 5000$ entry...But it appears that it may be leaving us in a year or two.

We also had some of our personally raised funds(In a school bank account)...ahem...disappear.

This is sickening to me

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

our team doesn't get nearly enough support from our schools, as i see it. they use us at their pride child to show to the public when we do well, but then when they're done using us for their purposes they shove us in a corner and take away our resources to make another successful robot. for this year they quartered our budget to the point that it will only pay for half of a regional, and meanwhile there is a new turf sports stadium worth millions of dollars now next to our school. we also have had our space taken away quite severely, and we can no longer store nearly as many old robots and supplies as we could before. they claim to support us, and they do let us use the facilities, but we have to go through processes to reserve them that we didn't use to have to, and during the summer when preparing for IRI, as well as other times, we were denied use of the gym by the athletic director because we're not a sport, even though it was empty and we were doing no harm. bottom line, although some administrators and teachers seem to take an interest in us, no one takes steps to make sure we can maintain our team from a monetary standpoint...

i've also heard several times "we have a robotics team!?!" and that breaks my heart...i'm personally going out of my way to change that, organizing demos for our robot at all of the schools in the district (there are 11...quite a project and some principals are very unwilling...) and trying to make sure people know we exist and how cool the program really is. i wish we had more support, so i'm taking steps to make it happen. e-mails even got some of our administrators and teachers to come to the Rah Cha Cha Ruckus! we will not be forgotten! :D

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

Team 610 is very fortunate to come from a private school. Robotics is a major "selling feature" for our school, and our program is consistently being shown to families who are interested in coming to our school. With our recent success, more faculty are wishing to become involved in robotics. Those who do not have any technical background are always willing to stop by and provide us with any support that we need. Just this summer, we were built a new robotics lab that is larger than our previous space as well as in a more convenient location. In terms of financial assistance, our school is more than willing to help in many ways. Over my four years on the team, the student body has become more aware of the robotics program and they are often stopping by to see the work that we are doing. Our school also lets us practice in a large area almost everyday after school. During build season, we set up half of a practice field there. Our school also allows us to access our robotics lab until late into the evening as well as on Saturdays during build season.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

We are a regional team combining students from like 5 or 6 schools. We have no school support at all. Our students have to meet in the evenings and on weekends. In fact some of our students have problems getting out of school for competitions. But our homeschool students are able to work on parts at home which helps. And the parents are very supportive.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

Team 527 really doesn't get too much attention from our school. Last year we won at the New York City regional, qualified at the SBPLI regional, and qualified again at the NC regional, but they didn't want St. Louis happening. A shame. We were all extremely disappointed. Our build room is an old text book archive closet thats probably about 20' by 10, and we keep our old robots in old bathrooms that arent used anymore.

We fund our own money, candy sales, restaurant nights, other activities also. But we have to re use parts from past robots. It's a shame when you have to part out last year's winning robot so soon :( But we end up building something decent every year. Ironically after we just won, we lost even more district funding, and they are now forcing alumni who used to come back and help us design get fingerprinted for 120$ and have to be interviewed by the board. It's slowly getting worse and worse for us.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

Why attend 3 regionals while you are parting out past robots? Doesn't make much sense to not use the 5K for robot parts.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

I wouldn't be surprised to find that is a state law or regulation, that anyone who works with school kids needs to be checked out. I even have to be "Risk Management" certified to be able to referee soccer (no fingerprints, but a background check). How often does a referee get to be alone with a soccer player?

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

In many districts the teachers get fingerprinted and background checked.

The school district there needs to be paying for this fee, not the volunteers...

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

We are pretty well supported. Both the principal of our high school and the ditrict's superintendent come to our build sessions pretty often (they think robotics is awesome). We don't get a whole lot of money from the district, but since we're the only team in the area we get pretty good funding from the local businesses. the best part is that we have our own build room (we do share it with an applied physics/mechanics class on ocassion) and free roam in the computer lab for business, CAD, programming, ect.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

It seems like quite a few teams have trouble getting students out school for just one event. I can understand how a school would oppose students being away for four events.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

Not a lot of people in our school know that we even have a team. The ones who do are either on it or have friends on it. We had an unusual amount of success last year, and we were slightly recognized for it, but overall nothing changed. I don't necessarily want recognition, but it'd be nice to get support from the school.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

Because we still always manage to build a decent enough machine to get us to the semi finals in at least one regional per year, used parts or not

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

174 isn't much supported. We get some money, but most of the students barely realize we even have a robotics team. Even the local newspapers know more about us. Kinda stinks.