Our team kept hoping and praying every year that this wouldn't happen. I just found out today that the Bedford City School District will be cutting ~30 teachers from the entire district next school year due to a decline of funding. Sadly, most of them are the vocational teachers, including our team's mentor and the team itself, whom we feel shouldn't go.
I'm torn right now, because on one hand, we weren't that involved outside of FIRST, nor were we very successful within FIRST. We did had fun, and built a robot, most of us (read: me) learned how to use power tools and bandsaws. But at the same time, I saw a lot of the restrictions put on the team by the school, and feel that maybe this could be a good thing.
I certainly have the time to invest in a new startup. I'm just unsure about how well it would be received after Bedford losing theirs. Possibly include homeschoolers and nearby districts. I mentioned before how I was starting a team sometime last year, though it failed because they decided to carry over the team another year. Even if there had been a team next year, we would've lost our major sponsor.
This team became my introduction into this wacky world called FIRST, where it instantly became cool to be a robot geek, and it certainly did the same to the reset of the students involved. This area barely have teams as it is. I want to involve as many students as possibly in this program, but not sure if I should, or how I should.
Anyway, I had to type this out somewhere, since I can't hold a blog for long. Thanks for reading.
