How much does your school support your FIRST Team?

[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!