[DanLevin247]

My bad Gadget, I'm used to seing Gadget247 instead of Gadget470...oh well.


As for 247, it's been in a downward spiral for a long time. Students are faced with an incredible fundraising burden like Gadget said, I currently have 304 dollars in my travel acount, which means i will have to pay roughly 195 dollars by the middle of Janurary to bring my acount up to date...which is really hard on my family, we have to dip into the money my grandmother left us when she passed away just to pay for my travel. Most kids on the team don't have acess to this kind of money, and sadly, because they have yet to learn anything about "robotics" in class, they are in turn dropping the class all together because of their lack of desire to participate in a demanding after school schedule and burn a 1200 dollar hole in their pockets. Our team is also a class, if you haven't realized it already, and the class aspect of the team is sadly, all but gone. We have a great teacher who doubles as our coach, but the class must be veru hard to write cirriculum for.


As for sponsorship, 247 is on it's way out. I think that if we don't get sponsorship from additional compainies soon, 247 will cease to exist. I think that it would be wonderful if FIRST was able to recognize the financial prediciment of some teams, and make their best effort to turn sponsors their way. I mean, NO TEAM, even MOE and their loud sticks, deserves to go out of existance, right?