Quote:
Originally Posted by Cory
Yes. But that price is absorbed by the school. Nearly every (is there any high school without a football team?) school has a football team. The students don't have to come up with the money themselves. The football team will exist every year, regardless of how little money a school district has, because something else like FIRST will get cut before the budget for sports does. I can't think of any student/parent/mentor fundraised activities that are as expensive as FIRST.
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A few years ago I used think that raising $10-$20k a year was such a huge ordeal, but now that our team is well established at our school, the burden of raising that much money becomes less. This year our parents have become more involved in fundraising and several of them also participate in fundraising for athletics and band. $20k a year for one of the big three athletic teams (football, baseball, basketball) is nothing. Heck our school's band program goes through almost $80k a year. I hear parents fork out at least $500 for their kid to play football. So I don't think that it's necessarily true that FIRST is the most expensive activity in school. I do think most schools with an enrollment of 1200+ can support a FIRST team, it will just take time.
Districts may cut robotics budgets before athletics only because they know it will cause less of an uproar. If parents and the community expect robotics in a school - then it won't get cut. We had a change in superintendent a few years back and our team was receving funds from the sup's personal budget. When the new sup came into the district I had to go ask for the money that had been available in the past and she knew she had to support it because it would be "political suicide" if she didn't - those were her words not mine!!
A previous post discussed how many teams depend heavily on the mentors and if the mentors leave the team dies. I'm sure this may be sadly true for many teams, but if they've been around and involving parents, alumni, and other mentors (like what athletics and band programs do), then these teams would continue. I know if I had to leave my team, it would continue on without me.