173 is a multi school team, we have 5, but are primarily 2.
We are lucky enough to have a facility in East Hartford donated to us. Most of the meetings are there, mostly because East Hartford has a much different economical make-up than the other school, who can more easily get rides, everyone has to get their on their own, it's a part of being on the team, you have to travel a bit.
The robot is built at the high school with a machine shop (Rockville) and it ususally ends up being kids from Rockville that build it, but we have NEVER discouraged anyone from coming to build, it just ends up that way. Money comes from sponsors to funraisers the team has done together, like a car wash, we have thought about expanding do that we would do things that involve in school activity, but have not yet gotten there, although it would probably happen simultaniously or who knows, depending on the situation.
As for authority, we have one team captain (me) which the team elects, one student liason from each school (elected by students at that school) who coordinates whatever they can with the school. We have the team leader, who is a teacher at East Hartford High, because he volenteered and has been doing it the longest (teacher-wise). We are currently between a Teacher Leader from Rockville because our teacher retired (AND STILL HELPS) but can no longer be an offcial chaperon, thus we use adults and a "team contact" teacher who is not fully committed, but runs all errands, like talking to the principal and is actually coming to atlanta to see what it's all about. Everyone has to be told that they need to listen to a liason, teacher, adult or captain no matter what school they are from, because we are a team, not different schools. Sometimes we have conflicts between what people say, but we're still working on that.
All in all, i can be sometimes really cool, because you get to hang out and be friends with kids from other teams, or hard, because school schedules are different or you don't know each other and have to have some team building meet & greet stuff at the begining of the year. Overall, its a different experience from being on a one school team, can't say better or worse, but you can give it a try or just help them start their own team
