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Team 573 is composed of students from both Brother Rice and Marian, brother-sister private schools in the southeast Michigan area.
Like others have stated, private schools struggle to initiate a team because they receive no funding from the state. Therefore, the money that the schools contribute to their robotics programs comes entirely from (in essence) the tuition of their students, given that sponsors provide a limited amount of money. When a program as involved as FIRST is proposed, the students (and their parents) of the school must be made aware.
Talking to students from other local private schools, I have seen that many have not even heard of FIRST, or robotics teams in general. Perhaps if information and advantages of these programs were better relayed (when accreditation is received, for example), the private schools would be more involved. Just a thought :-) .
I express a deep hope that more schools, private or public, may discover the benefits of FIRST - because it ROCKS.
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