Re: FIRST in Your School District
 

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.

Re: FIRST in Your School District
 

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...

Re: FIRST in Your School District
 

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?

Re: FIRST in Your School District
 

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!

Re: FIRST in Your School District
 

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.

Re: FIRST in Your School District
 

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.

Re: FIRST in Your School District
 

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.

Re: FIRST in Your School District
 

All you need is to find one crazy teacher!

Re: FIRST in Your School District
 

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?

Re: FIRST in Your School District
 

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.

Re: FIRST in Your School District
 

Fantastic!! Hope we get there soon!!

Re: FIRST in Your School District
 

Agreed.

Re: FIRST in Your School District
 

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

Re: FIRST in Your School District
 

We're thinking about starting robotics teams at some schools in our district in the coming months. Any ideas as to what to do? Who to talk to at the school, how to persuade them, etc.?

Thanks!

Re: FIRST in Your School District
 

The sequoia High school district has all schools represented:

Team 100: Woodside, Sequoia and Carlmont Highschools
Team 766: Menlo-Atherton

Also the Palo Alto High school district:

8: Palo Alto High School
192: Gunn HS