At our school we've recently started classes involved in Project Lead the Way (
http://www.pltw.org/). Over the next few years, we'll add a class every year that focuses on engineering or other related subjects. Eventually the robotics team will be incorporated and robotics will actually be a class at our school, but this will be after my time. That's a way to do it over the long run if your school isn't really wanted to just create a class for the next year.
Fundwise - Start fundraising as much as possible now. One idea is selling pieces of duct tape and getting a teacher to volunteer to be taped to the wall for your team. Students wouldn't mind paying a dollar to see their teacher taped to the wall
If you need tips with saving money travel wise, PM me and I can get you in touch with a teacher on our team who knows his stuff.
Hope that helped some.