Quote:
Originally Posted by wilsonmw04
The asks that Alison and Princess will be presenting to JCOTS are for a grant fund to help teams in schools located in disadvantaged or underrepresented areas and incentives for teachers to start and coach FIRST teams in their schools.
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I'm going to guess that this is what Blake got hung up on, so I don't know why he's being rebutted from what appears to be a "we didn't mean to say that" perspective.
Generally I have to agree that STEM in Virginia is way larger than FIRST, but at the state level that can be hard to see (see the next section). However additional STEM education support is greatly needed, particularly in 'underrepresented' areas (presuming % of college attendance here?). Particularly if it starts with very young students, FIRST is a prime example of inexpensive and sustainable STEM education curricular and extra-curricular activities.
wnewton really hit on the crux of the issue in VA - the current high school "track" system in VA leaves very little room for STEM-specific education. This has impacts in everything from funding to opinions on how the cost of STEM education is beneficial to rural communities. It's something that has been worked on from a curriculum perspective in recent years, but I agree that the lack of funding is ... aggravating.
However, if the testimony has a snippet on the
scale of impact of FRC upon Blue Cheese & 2998 alumni while alluding to "$100k on STEM per school makes more economical sense than $100k on football per school", I believe the testimony itself can leave a more lasting impression in the legislators' memories. This is how 1885 has testified in public hearings before, and for us it has maintained on-going dialogs with politicians at several levels. We've never done it from a funding perspective though, since there were other areas to address first.
I can't make it to that session, but I wish you the best!