[codeoftherobot]

Originally Posted by Martinez

It will definately raise public awareness of it. If our leaders know and support something, the people will know about it. What I'm a little shacky is the talk of tax dollors going to support all these teams. Its a complicated issue so I won't go into it though. What would be interesting is having military high school teams become a part of FIRST. Right now every base in the country has a Boy Scout Troop. Wouldn't it be awsome if the same were true for us? Department of Defense Schools have a very large budget, and I know they would want to get involved in this from personal experience.

Every AFE DoDS with a team..... Wow, what a concept.

Well a lot of the tax dollars out there that are set aside for science/mathematics based education actually aren't being utilized effectively. Depending on the state, there typically is a portion of the budget devoted to science and mathematics based education. The determination of where this money goes depends on who gets to it first (my guess). I know in California that we have a rather large budget for mathematics and science based education so if FIRST was able to make itself known, there would be a good chance that FIRST would be a recommended part of elementary and high school education in California.

For the military bases, doesn't the money used to support Boy Scout troops come out of the military budget for that base or is it a state/national policy? Pretty much it would just take someone with connections inside to ask if FIRST can be established. If you know people at those bases, I would say go ahead and arrange meetings to get the process going.