Texas Registration 2014

[2789_B_Garcia]

Hey, all,

Sorry I'm a little late to the thread, I've got a new job this year (still at my school, I'm still on the team), and so I've had to take a little CD break...but I'm back!

The big grant everyone was talking about earlier in the thread that helped kickstart several teams about 5 years or so ago was from the Texas High Schools Project (now known as Educate Texas)...We were one of those teams...what helped us stay afloat is that we got the big grant to get started and we also had a strong fundraising/logistics mentor that made sure we were stable as we were being weaned off of the big grant.

This underscores my favorite part about this community...the fact that there are so many ways to approach FIRST as a team. Our team didn't see very much on the field success during our first few years, but I feel that we developed in an organic and sustainable way. We did two regionals per year starting our second year and weren't necessarily "dominant" on the field, but we had a different focus from other teams.

I think there have been several recommendations on here that focus on "top-down" or "money" solutions looking at what sponsors, RD's, isd superintendents and the state can do...To add to the discussion and not necessarily "flame" anyone, I'd like to propose that teams collaboratively organize geographically to help develop relationships between teams to help better support struggling or new teams. I realize that not every established team might want to take part in such an endeavor, but I feel like it would be worth the effort to give it a shot. I know that there has been discussion (in particular in Central Texas) to do this in the past, and I know our team has seen at least one example of how this type of collaboration can be successful (at Chesapeake), so I'll put that out there.