[Jon Stratis]

Many, many teams share shop equipment with their school, so I'm sure you'll get plenty of good advise here...

The first key is to establish and maintain a good relationship with the school. Get in good with the teacher responsible for the shop (bring them on as a mentor if possible!) and you'll find you can work most things out with him/her. Make sure you're in good with the school administration as well - work with them for demo's at the school, invite them to an open house during the build season and to your competitions. Ask them what the team can do to help further and improve the school.

With that relationship, work with the teachers and administration on what this new shop is going to look like in a "few years". Odds are the school has/will have a budget for equipment - work with them to figure out a list of all the equipment that is needed, as well as equipment that would be nice but not strictly needed. You can then work with them to price out that equipment and see how it fits into their projected budget - it's possible that buying some equipment now, like a new finger break that will last 30+ years, will allow the school to spend the funds on different equipment that otherwise wouldn't have been bought when the space is refurbished. Remember, as a team you have some great, dedicated mentors with real-world experience. Use that resource to help the school make the shop better - those mentors might know more about what's needed in a truly modern shop than anyone at the school does!

This is an issue our team will probably encounter down the road. We just moved into the school last year, which included bringing our entire shop to the school (which is the first time the school has had a shop). As part of it, the school gave us a budget for new equipment, which let us get rid of some old stuff and get some stuff we didn't have before (like a mill and a lathe). Now, with the shop at the school and being used for some classes as well as the team, maintenance and upkeep of the machines is in a little bit of a gray area - no one at the school really knows how to maintain them, so the team mentors do it for them, and no one at the school really knows what is needed for the shop, so that falls on the mentors as well. We act as a resource for the school, which lets the school have and use a shop that would otherwise be beyond its capabilities.