Quote:
Originally Posted by OZ_341
I feel like we have not changed the culture in this country until every school has a FIRST field, a work shop, and a budget that matches other school sports.
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I can't agree with this. Not every school has a football field or even a team. Most schools have a place to work out but that is more of a health choice than anything else. As for budget, like most problems the cultural issues being addressed by FIRST are not ones that can be solved by throwing money at them.
That being said, my personal beliefs are that FIRST teams need to disassociate themselves with a single school and become more of a community group. Look to inner city areas for why, let us say that team 9991 starts one year at school A. They get a couple good sponsors from the area. Now team 9992 wants to start at school B the next year, sponsors from team 9991 cant support two teams. 9992 struggles to survive and fails the next year. Meanwhile 9991 is still running strong. School A and School B are less than 10 miles apart yet because Team 9991 is considered a school activity (or sport if you wish) students from School B cannot join because they don't go to that school. Now, instead let us replace team 9991 with team 365, they accept students from all around no matter what school they are from. This allows them to impact a much larger area and relieves the strain on the local economy for money, resources, and mentors. Take as an example, New York City has 1400 schools, assuming 1/4 of them are high schools that is 300 schools in a single city, 300 teams in <500 square miles. It is highly unlikely that the funding, material, and mentor support is available in that high density. NYC would be better served by having several large "super teams" such that the costs of the team could be better spread out.* These teams cannot belong to schools, they must belong to school districts or non profit organizations. Remember, FIRST is not about education, it is about inspiration, nothing says that we are better served running out of schools.
*Please note, this is not a jab at NYC teams, I am merely using it as an example due to the large number of schools.