Katy ISD Sponsored 624 Build Site

[Bill W.]

Team 624 is extremely excited to announce that we have been working closely with the Katy Independent School District to design a district-wide STEM center, which has officially been approved by the Exexcutive School Board just tonight! The district has funded the 24,000 ft^2, $5 million STEM center to be constructed and opened by December 2014. It is laid out to support up to 8 FRC teams within the district, and has 8 seperate build spaces connected to a bay area large enough to hold a full game field!

Needless to say this a gigantic leap for FIRST in the Houston area, especially for Team 624 CRyptonite Robotics at CRHS, as well as Team 4639 Spartan Robotics at SLHS, Team 2882 Nutz n' Bolts Robotics at MRHS, and any future KISD teams!

You can find out more information on our website here:

http://team624.org/files/STEM_Center_Presentation.pdf

[geomapguy]

Originally Posted by Bill W.

Team 624 is extremely excited to announce that we have been working closely with the Katy Independent School District to design a district-wide STEM center, which has officially been approved by the Exexcutive School Board just tonight! The district has funded the 24,000 ft^2, $5 million STEM center to be constructed and opened by December 2014. It is laid out to support up to 8 FRC teams within the district, and has 8 seperate build spaces connected to a bay area large enough to hold a full game field!

Needless to say this a gigantic leap for FIRST in the Houston area, especially for Team 624 CRyptonite Robotics at CRHS, as well as Team 4639 Spartan Robotics at SLHS, Team 2882 Nutz n' Bolts Robotics at MRHS, and any future KISD teams!

You can find out more information on our website here:

http://team624.org/files/STEM_Center_Presentation.pdf

I remember seeing the information on this a couple of months ago. This will make two "permanent fields" in the Houston area!

[Abhishek R]

Yup, we're really grateful for the support the district has shown us in getting this STEM Center rolling. It really is a huge step forward as we try to get teams at every high school in KISD.

So excited for 2015, and 2014 hasn't even started yet!

[Coach Norm]

Wow, Congrats. This is awesome. I am forwarding to my Administration right now.

[DonRotolo]

Wow. Congratulations! This is worthy of a big celebration.

Makes me almost want to move to Katy.

[JB987]

Holy crap are you guys fortunate! Inspirational and will be used by others to leverage their efforts to find support in their own districts. Be sure To posAt proGrEss updates

[safiq10]

Congradulations. I hope you guys will offer tours of this place cause it looks amazing.

[Akash Rastogi]

Really incredible workspace. Also extraordinary that they have space for expansion!

Perhaps you could explain how you were able to accomplish this? It would be a really awesome resource for other teams and districts if you have any documentation to share. Did the district approach you about this, or was this something you have been working on trying to get for a few years now? If so, I'd really appreciate the process you had to take.

Looks amazing, congratulations!

[sanddrag]

Passing this on to my school district.

[Michael Corsetto]

Excellent work 624 and company! Clearly there were many parties involved, just from looking at some of the planning meeting pictures. I too would love to hear more of the story behind making this possible.

[Pjohn1959]

Congrats!. Nice job!

This is an inspiration to other districts to do the same.

Hopefully you can get other schools nearby to visit and show off your accomplishments.

You also save the hour+ drive to the Clear Creek facility for practice!

[JB987]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

Passing this on to my school district.

+1

[JB987]

Is the 5 mil for just the building or does that include all of the machines in the shop too?

[Abhishek R]

To answer the questions on how we got to this point...It was a long, 5 plus year effort. We are an industry funded team (especially being near Houston's energy corridor, lots of oil and gas companies) aligned with a single high school (Cinco Ranch High School, 3000+ students) and currently do not have a build site on school property. We were easily out of sight, out of mind and had the appearance of an after school club for those that did not have exposure or understanding of FIRST. (Think your hobbyist robotics nerds who supposedly built minibots in a dark closet afterschool). We recognized we needed to let people know who Team 624 is and what FIRST is all about.

We focused on getting the school principal and staff, KISD School Board and School Superintendent to recognize the benefits of FIRST and the scope of FIRST Robotics and Team 624. We wanted them to understand what FIRST robotics means and what it can do, so we approached them like an active team member. We invited the Superintendent and Board Members to the build site (rented storefronts, different location each build season, and some showed up!), invites to the regional competitions (i.e Lone Star), and sent them frequent updates on our team activities.

The students made presentations at the end of each season at the board meetings that included the robot, shared with them our team videos, some attended our End of Year Banquets where they see our year round involvement and accomplishments, had major sponsors send notices to the board on how much they support FIRST (thank you BP, our founding and major sponsor), grew the FLL program in Katy and hosted FLL Tournaments and invited them to attend those, and we grew the number of FRC teams in the school district and kept the Board updated.

We brought back graduated students to talk at board meetings on what FIRST meant to them and how FIRST had shaped their path to college and how they were successful in college and after college. We got their attention and showed continued, sustained growth and success across multiple years. We also emphasized the fact that all the graduating seniors involved in Team 624 Robotics over the past 5 years have all gone on to college in pursuit of STEM related degrees. And always important, we emphasized that all the Katy FRC teams are self funded through industry donations and not drawing any funds from the school district for our yearly operating budget.

As the enthusiasm and recognition of FIRST Robotics grew, we asked to work with the appropriate school resources to establish a permanent build site for the teams. This was enthusiastically supported by Katy Superintendent Alton Frailey and he set into motion the development and proposal for the STEM Center. We were invited to participate in this process and worked closely with the architects, community representatives, and school representatives in putting together the design. The board then took on the task of funding and agreed the future of STEM in Katy was worth the investment.

It is a STEM Center, to be used as a resource by all the Katy Schools for activities such as Robotics (FRC and FLL) and the many other science oriented activities and projects that need centralized large work spaces to accomplish. It will be used to showcase the Katy School district support of STEM to local tech and energy companies for expanded STEM related partnerships.

As for the building cost, it is estimated at $4.5 million (no cost for 2 acres of land, it was already owned by KISD). There is an additional $500K available for shared tools and supplies. We hope to move into the building in December 2014. We've gone from building out of a mentor's garage to a small closet in an office to a medium sized rented space. This will allow us to cooperate with all the Katy teams to get FRC to every high school and FLL to every middle school, both of which we are trying and already have made progress to push.

We will keep you posted as the building progresses!

[geomapguy]

Originally Posted by Abhishek R

We are an industry funded team (especially being near Houston's energy corridor, lots of oil and gas companies)

The Oil & Gas industry is perhaps the best asset to FIRST teams in Louisiana and Texas. Our team is fortunate enough that my father works for an oil company that will sponsor our team all the way in Louisiana .