[penguinfrk]

Personally, I think it'd really be worth the necessary budget to increase salaries for teachers who advise clubs outside of schools (not just FIRST robotics, but all activities in general). It's not that teachers don't recognize that these after clubs are really beneficial to the students, but that many are simply too swamped with work to put in hour after hour to these clubs. Our team's faculty contact gives periodic tips, but mostly is working on grading and lesson plans etc. while we use his room. Our main mentors are all engineers who in their free time are robotics hobbyists.

I'd like to see something along those lines translate to legislation, though I'm not entirely sure that it will. Washington state's governor is cutting budgets for gifted education, so my hopes aren't high.