Team Sustainability

[Johnny_5]

This year being our rookie year, I think I can speak on behalf of the team that we really had a lot of fun. But things cannot function like this year as they did last year.

Ever since I heard about a FRC team being started here in Marysville I has psyched. Another team let us borrow their robot and I just flew into it. I really have not been able to put down anything with FIRST for more than 24 hours since when I found out last fall. I have a huge amount of dedication to the program and would do absolutely anything to see it succeed and find kids my age who are passionate about STEM to congregate in this team. So soon enough without even realizing what I was doing I was the team captain, and determined to not let the team down.

Our mentors are mainly from Honda and there are a few teachers from the high school, which is where the trouble hits. These teachers I think were "assigned" by the people higher up the food chain in our school to work with this program, so their attitude wasn't so great from the get-go. One teacher works with the FFA and we believe that he say FRC as a threat to the FFA. But one of the teachers eventually did kind of seem to take some interest in the program.

Throughout the build season we found that we needed space for storage and we went to the teachers to talk to administration, and they never did anything. The one who liked the program accused us of making a mess of their shop area, so he took our batteries hostage, 4 days before ship date. We could not be in the school without the teachers and they never put in any time after 5:30 on weekdays, and never on weekends. But they all openly admitted to knowing nothing about the electronics or mechanics inside the robot, so for the first 2 weeks of build season we did nothing.

When competition came around the one teacher who took our batteries hostage seemed to get a little excited about going to the competition. And after the competition there was a meeting with what we need to do different next year all of these issues were brought up by parents and some they denied and others they said they will fix for next year. How are we supposed to trust them for next year? And the FFA teacher who is in charge of the metal shop has made all of his tools and shop area off limits and we are not allowed to use them, and the other teachers say this is not an issue.

I am not bad mouthing anyone in any way shape or form. Nor am I complaining. I simply am voicing for help. I do not think that these teachers should say they will do something but not have the time to commit wholeheartedly if their involvement is so crucial to success.

We have decided that we want to leave the school system so we can manage our own finances and less restricted access to the building. Does anyone know a good place to start looking for another meeting location? Right now we are working on securing the resources to put together a full machine/metal shop to work on the robot. On an ending note, leaving the school system was mentioned at that meeting and all of the teachers said they would not be involved if it was not at the school. They were legitimately threatening that this program would fall if they were not involved and it was not at the school.

Any help is welcome, thanks for listening