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Unread 15-04-2008, 01:19
Rick TYler Rick TYler is offline
A VEX GUy WIth A STicky SHift KEy
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Re: FIRST has $8 Million?!? What did I miss?

Quote:
Originally Posted by wendymom View Post
I have to disagree. I have kids in band, choir, soccer, and dance. Robotics costs much more to run. (and as team mom I know what it cost to run our team.) While football and band may have a larger budget....they traditionally have at least three times as many kids participating. The cost per student in Robotics is higher.
Wow -- exactly the opposite of my experience. My son just went on a big trip with the band and it cost us nearly $1,000. He's acted in two plays and that has been more than $500. Even Little League cost more than $250 a season. If you take the cost of a single-regional FRC team (which is what the majority of FRC teams get to do) at about $10,000 for 25 students, that's $400 per student. The first play my son was in cost us nearly $300 (costumes, "participation fee," "voluntary donation"). His trumpet cost nearly $1,000 (rental costs over four years -- we finally just bought it). FRC isn't cheap, but it is not, in my experience, substantially more expensive than other youth programs. Corporate sponsorship can also be much more generous for robotics than other events. GM isn't likely to give a high school theater program $25,000 a year, for example.

The real bargain is FTC -- we fielded three teams of a total of 20 students for about $3,500, not counting travel to Championships. A cost of $175 per student made it cheaper than Little League.
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Exothermic Robotics Club, Venturing Crew 2036
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