I personally would suggest walking into a board meeting and talk to them almost like your doing a Sponsorship pitch (i guess you kinda are).
Bring the bot, few kids, a teacher, a parent...I would bring your teams' animation video, the chairman's award...
One thing that my team is doing for our sponsorship pitches is that we're making an 'advertisement' almost...It's about 2 mins long, and breifly shows why the program deserves support: Community involvemnt, opens doors for students, advertise (the school, the board, etc), and gives kids a chance to learn useful stuff.
One person that you might want to think about bringing along with you (if you can) is someone who was in the FIRST programme at your school in a past year that has gone on and graduated, and get them to come in and say something like "FIRST helped me get where I am today...Please give the students at the school now the same oppurtunity".
Also, I suggest to everyone here: Pick up the phone and call
Superintendent Cora Kelly at (313) 389-3300 and urge her to keep the FIRST programme alive at Melvindale High School. We're talking about a 30 second phone call that can SERIOUSLY help the school.
Additionaly, a suggestion to you Rachel to try to make the programme more appealing to the school: Try to come up with some sorta thing that will help the school out. Like at my school the Robotics team has "Movie Days" - we basically put a movie on in the auditorium during the lunch period to keep kids outa the halls and stuff. Helps with supervision, makes it easier for the teachers, and the kids enjoy a movie (which of course has a Robotics ad at the begining instead of a movie ad
). These people are greedy, if having the programme remain will somehow help them, they might be more inclined to go along with it.
Hope this helps...and REMEMBER EVERYONE: CALL 313-389-3300!!!