Kathy,
Thanks for the posting. We knew about the Governor's initiative, but that quote about Carl Haydn and FIRST did not make the Phoenix papers.
Our team has met with her three times in the last year and a half. We even proposed an Arizona plan to encourage schools to participate in "FIRST-like" extracurricular activities and she put $3,000,000 in her proposed budget for the new year. The legislature cut it out, so it did not go through this year, but we will try again.
Woodie Flowers says something like 5% of high schools in the U.S. have FIRST teams. (
http://mitworld.mit.edu/play/371/ He speaks about 31 minutes after the beginning)
Maybe we will reach the critical mass when many schools will start to form FIRST teams or at least do more project based math, science, and engineering. At least our governor seems to be all for it!
Allan