[KenWittlief]

been thinking about this over dinner. Resist the urge to run to the government as if you were petitioning the king to solve your problems. If your government representitives dont know what FIRST is all about, then we are better off keeping their hands off until they do.

Lets look at this backwards. Next year we magically have a FIRST team at every HS in your state, or to make it easier to grasp, in your city.

Whats that going to be like?

Will FIRST be able to supply playfields and scoring systems and judges and head refs to every regional in the county, when every HS has a team?

Could IFI possibly have that many control systems built in a year?

Where will the regionals be held? a HS gym? at local collages? Universities? regional events at HS and state playoffs at Universities?

If every HS has a team, and the goal of FIRST is for students to work with engineers and scientists, then where are these 3 or 4 engineers per HS going to come from? What about cities that dont have any local engineering companys to supply mentors? An average size city/ suburbs/ surrounding rural area might have 30 HighSchools. That means you need about 120 engineers/ scientists / technology professionals each year, in each metropolitan area.

I think these are the major issues. Now what can the government do to address these things?