[TubaMorg]

I would say our school gives us very minimal support. There is some politics going on behind the scenes at the administration level or something. It was sort of iffy whether we were even going to get to have a team this year. Our teacher mentor (Paloma Garner) applied for and received a grant to help fund the robotics team to be administered by the school. The catch was that we had to fill out requisition forms for required parts/materials, then when the guy felt like it he would take it to some committee for approval, THEN when he felt like it he would go and get our stuff. This guy had absolutely no involvement with the robot. We made a request for some basic (but essential) tools 1 week prior to the kickoff. We did not get a single tool until 2 weeks before the end of the build. He would not except receipts for reimbursement. If it wasn't for the fact that our sponsor, MAES, came through with some valiant fund raising, we would still be staring at a bunch of bins full of kit parts.

Second thing. As the build season progressed, our available work hours kept getting reduced. Strangely each reduction came soon after a visit by the principal...hmmm. The whole thing reminds me of the movie "Major League". She would come in and see we were making progress then throw another hurdle in our way. During the week we were allowed to work from 4pm-7pm. Sounds pretty good except the first and last half hours are spent setting up the classroom and cleaning up. We COULD have worked more hours, but we had to pay the janitors over time to stay later.

This is a mostly low income student school. It's almost as if the school administration wants to say "LOOK! We gave them this great opportunity and they screwed it up!" Some of the students were disheartened by all of this and left the team. I let the rest of them know that they were being used as pawns. It made me so proud to see them work doubly hard with what we had.

Our team motto? "If we're going down, we're going down swinging!"