[mathking]

Originally Posted by Collin Fultz

How is this different from districts?

It is similar to the district model. It's different mostly because of scale. I think that most folks are right that there will probably never be FRC in every school, just as not every school has a football team. Some districts will obviously have teams that span multiple schools. Some won't choose to have a program. But in general if FRC became accepted enough that state athletic associations were organizing tournaments, it would create an expectation that schools would field teams.

One of the things that drives me nuts about the "FRC is too expensive for schools" argument is that fielding an FRC team is not intrinsically more expensive than fielding a lot of sports teams or other activities. If a school has a band that goes to competitions the odds are that its budget dwarfs that of the FRC team. Our FRC team would be in the mid range (we have between 60 and 80 most years) of team/activity sizes at our school, and in the mid range of cost. But it is expected that the school will field a football team, a band, a soccer team and track team. So they do it. I want to get FRC there. As I have said, I have been involved in form or another in most competitive robotics programs at one time or another. In my experience FRC is the one that generates the most excitement. It is the one that best scales up for larger teams. (For example, we have FTC. Two teams. If we didn't have FRC and most of the kids who did FRC decided to do FTC, we would need 7 - 10 teams. And it would not be cheaper than FRC.) And I think I will stop here because I don't want to pull the thread too far sideways.