Smallest public school to have a team

[cadmanDOM910]

Originally Posted by Thundrio

My teams school is among the smallest (around 500 students max, and graduating class is 80-100 (i think we had 76 this year but that's about as low as it gets). This was our first year and we had about 20-27 kids on the FIRST team from all different grade levels. during the build season we often felt we were at a disadvantage because teams in larger schools/cities had access to designated machine shops and practice areas, while we created a makeshift workshop in our head mentors classroom, and tested in our school library. we have great support from our school principle, although the lack of a metal shop is not something we can fix at the moment. I'm just curious if other teams from small schools have the same problems as us?

My school has slightly less students than yours (400 to max 450) with 26 on the team. Because of this we are actually at an advantage. Because there are less students in a school designed to hold approximately only 1500 students, the robotics team actually gets more space and room. We currently have 3.5 rooms (machine room, "build room", cad/business/graphics/website room, storage room is the .5) and a practice area that isn't permanent but we can use for a few weeks when needed. We also have good support from our principal and certain staff members. So, in our case we aren't really having similar problems, and I'm sure others would tell you different, but I figured I'd tell my teams story anyway.

[RayTurner1126]

our team draws from two high schools (in the same town) that each probably have about 1500 students, and we had a pretty large team this year (for us) of 34 students. During the summer that more than halves, and not all of our members could be classified as "actively involved."

[P.J.]

Dom technically we don't apply to this discussion, as we are a private school. Just saying. We still are small though.

[BJT]

We draw students from two schools each with around 80 kids in high school. we usually have about 25 students in robotics with around 10 doing most of the work.

[pfreivald]

We don't have a dedicated machine shop, either, but that just means we have to budget in cleanup time (about an hour every day we meet) and time to pull stuff from our storage area (time varies, usually 10-20 minutes at the beginning, plus frequent trips to/from). It's not an enormous disadvantage.

[waialua359]

I believe we fit in this pool of smallest public school to have a team.
In Hawaii, we rank almost at the top for smallest public school, especially on Oahu, the island where most schools are.

We are definitely one of the farther schools to get to in a rural part of the island.

[chuckmerja]

Well, we've informally claimed the "smallest team from the smallest school" title, but now we see we might not be... we have just over 100 kids in our 4 year HS, and get 5ish committed roboteers. I'm not sure what we'd do with another 15 kids - maybe better community outreach))

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by Thundrio

My teams school is among the smallest (around 500 students max, and graduating class is 80-100 (i think we had 76 this year but that's about as low as it gets). This was our first year and we had about 20-27 kids on the FIRST team from all different grade levels. during the build season we often felt we were at a disadvantage because teams in larger schools/cities had access to designated machine shops and practice areas, while we created a makeshift workshop in our head mentors classroom, and tested in our school library. we have great support from our school principle, although the lack of a metal shop is not something we can fix at the moment. I'm just curious if other teams from small schools have the same problems as us?

That's about how we started - similar size, no machine shop or practice area. We ended up working out of a parent's garage and basement that year.

Since your school doesn't have what you feel you need to help grow your team to the next level, I suggest you look out in your community. We managed to form a partnership with a local engineering co-op that had a full machine shop for our second and third years. The owner of the building rented us space for the build season (and a big closet to store all our stuff during the off season) real cheap, and we had full run of the machine shop in the evenings/weekends.

That was such a productive relationship, the school decided to get a 3 year lease on a space in the building for us, and completely redid it to meet our specs for what the team needed. We've managed over the years to accumulate a fairly impressive set of machines and tools, mostly by looking out for great deals in the area, local auctions, and craislist.

I know it can look bleak when you see what 10+ year old teams have available and compare it to what you have just starting out. But keep your eyes on the end goal, set up a list of things you want, and be aggressive about getting what the team needs!