Once again, thank you all for your concern and your helpful suggestions. We really appreciate each of them.
I'll start by answering the questions brought up to the best of my ability.
I want to start off by saying once again that we have absolutely no idea why the school district decided to do this. We did nothing wrong, we did nothing to warrant such action to the best of our knowledge. I have been racking my brain trying to determine what might have caused this to happen, and I can come up with absolutely nothing that would have caused the school board to take such an extreme course of action. The fact that they will not tell us their reasoning seems to me to be indicative of some inner politics at work. We have absolutely no idea what the district's thought process is, and if we had any idea what could have engendered such a rash course of action, we would tell you.
Second, we are not considering suing the school district or taking any sort of legal action. We feel we have taken every action possible short of legal measures, and when everything was unsuccessful, we decided to accept the situation, unfortunate as it is. Maybe we have grounds for sure actions, but we are not considering them, as we don't feel it would create a good situation for us or the school or the teachers who are affiliated with LiveWire.
To answer some of the points brought up, the build space in the mall was arranged for by LiveWire coaches and was paid for by private donations, at a rent significantly reduced by the mall in the first place.
As far as the situation regarding our number: the school district did not want us to continue independent of them, even though they didn't allow us to continue as a team. Even after we realized all our equipment was being taken, we asked to at least keep our number, but the district refused, and even wanted to keep our name. Luckily, FIRST intervened and allowed us to keep our name. We do not understand WHY the district wanted to keep our number, but they succeeded. I personally am not entirely clear on the logistics of that, but it is done and FIRST did what it could in the situation.
Concerning rivalries, there is no public rivalry that the district could have been trying to break up. LiveWire always made it a point to take the high road and live up to a high standard of gracious professionalism to do our part to ensure good relations with the other team. An outside observer during the last year would have seen LiveWire and HayWire working closely together, exchanging ideas, and cooperating with gracious professionalism.
For some good news, we have very recently become affiliated with 4H. While they were unable to offer us any monetary support, we were able to attain 501c(3) status, which we are very happy about.
For our leftover money, it was money we had raised through summer camps we hosted over the summer. It was placed in a school district account, because in order to make our camp's registration fees tax deductible, the money had to be paid through the school district. So there's nothing we can do to recover this unfortunately
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Overall, I think one of the best things we can get out of this situation is that (1) 501c(3) holds some very good benefits, even for teams who are well situated within a school. But (2), I am very happy to note that the support from the FIRST community has been amazing. We have received multiple offers of extra parts, and we're grateful for everyone who has offered them. We'll be in contact with you, thank you so much.