How much does your school support your FIRST Team?

[mayde]

Unfortunately, living in a redneck podunk town results in a very sports-centered school district.

The most "funding" our school will give us is permission to sell ice cream at lunch and we even get complaints from teachers about that because kids eat ice cream during lunch.

(facepalm.)
North Idaho sucks.

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by mayde

Unfortunately, living in a redneck podunk town results in a very sports-centered school district.

The most "funding" our school will give us is permission to sell ice cream at lunch and we even get complaints from teachers about that because kids eat ice cream during lunch.

(facepalm.)
North Idaho sucks.

Many teams start off like this. Don't let social conventions get you down. Keep at it, and eventually things do change. We started off in a town full of farmland, we're now the most respected program in our district. It takes time, but you will live through wonderful changes in your town.

We started off with 6 students and a shop teacher in an unheated wood shop room. No tools, no heat, and no power lead to strong efforts. We now have upwards of 100+ students, teachers, and mentors on our team, access to a robotics lab, metal shop, and a wood shop in the school. The district also funds our first regional and kit. They also support our team's districtwide robotics curriculum for K-12 students.

[[TBT] Vampire]

Originally Posted by mayde

Unfortunately, living in a redneck podunk town results in a very sports-centered school district.

The most "funding" our school will give us is permission to sell ice cream at lunch and we even get complaints from teachers about that because kids eat ice cream during lunch.

(facepalm.)
North Idaho sucks.

I agree, same school. Hah.

[sandiegodan]

I've read the "stipend" threads as much as I can and I haven't seen this particular perspective addressed.

I agree that teachers should get a stipend from the school consistent with whatever is being provided to an athletic coach, band director, drama teacher or what have you.

What do you think about paying that teacher out of your corporate donations or other raised funds? Do you think your donators would agree that this is what they donated their money to support? Where do you draw the line or define the policy that your treasury can be spent on? Do you review those policies with your donators or do they tend to not ask questions about where the money goes?

I'm very interested in the community's take on this. I'm kind of new to all this and would like to level set my perspective with other's experience.

Thank you,

[ebarker]

If you have ever seen our pit, it has a big sign over it. We do a new one each year.



If you ever saw the movie "The Jones'es" - it was filmed at Kell, these folks are actors. They are over 18 pretending to be high school aged hipsters. Look down the hall to the left at the wall clock.




Now look down the hall at the same clock as above - see the sign just past the clock :



So there you go, another sign, similiar to the one in the 1st photo. The sign was not installed into the school until after the movie was shot.



These banners and the sign is about as prominent as anything can be placed at this school. We have moral support, now we are working on the teacher incentive. That is a county issue.

.

[waialua359]

Our team has been fortunate enough to have supported our school instead the past two years with technology, other teaching resources, and donations to community events.

[daniel_dsouza]

Wow, compared to most of the teams here, I think we are pretty lucky.

Space:
Team 2134 is mainly student run, but we do have a teacher who is "in charge". As a teacher, he teaches the drafting, tech, autotech, and engineering classes. He is still pretty new to everything FIRST, so we are learning together. Becuase he is involved in all these classes, we have a moderately powerful computer lab (used for programming and CAD), a small machine shop (mainly for woodworking, but some metal working machines), and a storage closet (tools and robot materials) at our our disposal. Everything is indoors and connected to each other, which is a huge plus. However, we share everything with our school so we are expected to completely clean up, and share our storage space with really old computers.

Financial:
As of now, we don't receive any direct support (like a friendly $5k for registration) from our school, but we are hoping to change that. We recently changed principals, and I intend to ask him where he stands about FIRST (read our team). While we don't receive any direct support, our main mentor/teacher mentioned above works wonders with the ruling class (read district office) and managed to score a milling machine, lathe, and small 3D printer! All of our finances are managed through a club account, which is very cumbersome to use (see other threads for what I mean). We get about 20% of our finances from outside sources, 70% from club dues and tax credit, and 10% from fundraisers.

School response:
Since our rookie season in 2007, our team has had about 10-20 members. The majority are freshmen who don't have a reputation/social life/AP classes to worry about. We usually start with 30, but just like in Sparta the build season weeds out the "weak". If you ask any non-robotics student at my school, there is a 98% chance that they not know that there is a robotics club at our school, let alone the purpose of FIRST. Most of the students that attend our fundraisers are either from our team, or college alumni. This is mainly our fault as our team doesn't want to demonstrate at our school assemblies (our robot is so beat up, that our club officers are ashamed to show it off.), and that we don't have a presence at school events (save for the freshmen orientation, the reason for our high ratio of freshmen to upperclassmen).
Some of my teachers show an interest in FIRST(chemistry, math), but we still have to ask them if they could help out.
I don't think our administration knows we exist...yet.

Our companion school (our team consists of two high schools) seems to have the situation the other way around. They have very little workable space, almost a negative financial response from their school, but a great response from their student body.

I wish you luck...and hope to see you compete next year.
Daniel D.

[JohnSchneider]

Our school is home to the world champion TARC rocketry team. They went to Paris France last year and won Worlds for America. Our school gives them 0$.

We are usually fortunate enough to get just the 5000$ entry...But it appears that it may be leaving us in a year or two.

We also had some of our personally raised funds(In a school bank account)...ahem...disappear.

This is sickening to me

[RayTurner1126]

our team doesn't get nearly enough support from our schools, as i see it. they use us at their pride child to show to the public when we do well, but then when they're done using us for their purposes they shove us in a corner and take away our resources to make another successful robot. for this year they quartered our budget to the point that it will only pay for half of a regional, and meanwhile there is a new turf sports stadium worth millions of dollars now next to our school. we also have had our space taken away quite severely, and we can no longer store nearly as many old robots and supplies as we could before. they claim to support us, and they do let us use the facilities, but we have to go through processes to reserve them that we didn't use to have to, and during the summer when preparing for IRI, as well as other times, we were denied use of the gym by the athletic director because we're not a sport, even though it was empty and we were doing no harm. bottom line, although some administrators and teachers seem to take an interest in us, no one takes steps to make sure we can maintain our team from a monetary standpoint...

i've also heard several times "we have a robotics team!?!" and that breaks my heart...i'm personally going out of my way to change that, organizing demos for our robot at all of the schools in the district (there are 11...quite a project and some principals are very unwilling...) and trying to make sure people know we exist and how cool the program really is. i wish we had more support, so i'm taking steps to make it happen. e-mails even got some of our administrators and teachers to come to the Rah Cha Cha Ruckus! we will not be forgotten!

[hat_ios]

Team 610 is very fortunate to come from a private school. Robotics is a major "selling feature" for our school, and our program is consistently being shown to families who are interested in coming to our school. With our recent success, more faculty are wishing to become involved in robotics. Those who do not have any technical background are always willing to stop by and provide us with any support that we need. Just this summer, we were built a new robotics lab that is larger than our previous space as well as in a more convenient location. In terms of financial assistance, our school is more than willing to help in many ways. Over my four years on the team, the student body has become more aware of the robotics program and they are often stopping by to see the work that we are doing. Our school also lets us practice in a large area almost everyday after school. During build season, we set up half of a practice field there. Our school also allows us to access our robotics lab until late into the evening as well as on Saturdays during build season.

[Ashley Painter]

We are a regional team combining students from like 5 or 6 schools. We have no school support at all. Our students have to meet in the evenings and on weekends. In fact some of our students have problems getting out of school for competitions. But our homeschool students are able to work on parts at home which helps. And the parents are very supportive.

[GlassPrison142]

Team 527 really doesn't get too much attention from our school. Last year we won at the New York City regional, qualified at the SBPLI regional, and qualified again at the NC regional, but they didn't want St. Louis happening. A shame. We were all extremely disappointed. Our build room is an old text book archive closet thats probably about 20' by 10, and we keep our old robots in old bathrooms that arent used anymore.

We fund our own money, candy sales, restaurant nights, other activities also. But we have to re use parts from past robots. It's a shame when you have to part out last year's winning robot so soon But we end up building something decent every year. Ironically after we just won, we lost even more district funding, and they are now forcing alumni who used to come back and help us design get fingerprinted for 120$ and have to be interviewed by the board. It's slowly getting worse and worse for us.

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by GlassPrison142

Team 527 really doesn't get too much attention from our school. Last year we won at the New York City regional, qualified at the SBPLI regional, and qualified again at the NC regional, but they didn't want St. Louis happening. A shame. We were all extremely disappointed. Our build room is an old text book archive closet thats probably about 20' by 10, and we keep our old robots in old bathrooms that arent used anymore.

We fund our own money, candy sales, restaurant nights, other activities also. But we have to re use parts from past robots. It's a shame when you have to part out last year's winning robot so soon But we end up building something decent every year. Ironically after we just won, we lost even more district funding, and they are now forcing alumni who used to come back and help us design get fingerprinted for 120$ and have to be interviewed by the board. It's slowly getting worse and worse for us.

Why attend 3 regionals while you are parting out past robots? Doesn't make much sense to not use the 5K for robot parts.

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by GlassPrison142

... and they are now forcing alumni who used to come back and help us design get fingerprinted for 120$ and have to be interviewed by the board.

I wouldn't be surprised to find that is a state law or regulation, that anyone who works with school kids needs to be checked out. I even have to be "Risk Management" certified to be able to referee soccer (no fingerprints, but a background check). How often does a referee get to be alone with a soccer player?

[ebarker]

In many districts the teachers get fingerprinted and background checked.

The school district there needs to be paying for this fee, not the volunteers...