[Rick TYler]

I haven't added up our VRC expenses in detail yet this year, but it's about $2,700. We went from 18 students to about 30 in VRC. Some of our students only do FTC, so not all of our 40 kids are involved in VRC.

So our outlay was about $90 per student for VRC, not including what we spent the last two years, and not counting the $1,100 we spent on a competition field. We are hosting a tournament so we didn't have much choice on this, and it is the same field we use for FTC. If we added in the parts we bought the last two years, our direct VRC expenses would be about $5,000, or $100 per student/year.

For the 20 kids we have in FTC, it has come to more than $200 per student.

Our indirect costs (tools, storage, t-shirts, etc.) run to quite a bit. Overall, we spent $250 per student this year on the program and program-related expenses. This should drop next year as long as our membership doesn't increase.

We are now mentoring an FRC team that wants to do VRC, and plan on starting two new VRC programs in schools next year. The financial impact of this is not yet known, but we expect that the new programs will be self-funding, with us providing expertise. It's unlikely we will use FTC as a starter program for these three schools because of its higher cost.