Questions: Support From Your School (Financial & Other)

[cbale2000]

1. Is your school public or private?
Public

2. How many years has your team been in existence?
14 Years

3. What support does your school or district give to your team (money, facilities, other donations)?
We have a classroom, workspace, and several tool rooms dedicated solely to the robotics team. We also share a large machine shop with the Machine Tools and Engineering classes.

4. What does your overall team budget look like? What portion of that budget is contributed by your school?
We get roughly $15k per year from our primary sponsor which covers all costs including registration, robot build, tools, and travel expenses. The school does not (and cannot, due to budget constraints) support us financially.

5. Does the school provide faculty and/or co-curricular paid positions for the team? If so, how many?
Our team coach taught at the school until a few years ago, when she retired, she offered to continue coaching the team. She was not, and is not paid for coaching the team as far as I know.

6. Does your district have FLL/FTC teams as well? How are those funded/supported in relation to FRC?
There are at least a few FLL teams in the district, they recieve their funding either through the FIRST in Michigan state grant program or through our local FIRST 501c3 organization, "FIRST of the Great Lakes Bay Region".

7. Does your school have a robotics course or series of programs? Is FRC worked on during these hours?
Our school has an Engineering / Project Lead the Way course that is mentored by our teams former coach. There is no direct correlation to the FRC program, though several of the students on our team are also in the class.

8. What does your team do for your school?
As our school is a Career Center, we do not have a "native" student body, and instead pull 11th and 12th grade students from schools around the area for half-day programs at our school. Since this requires recruiting students from these other schools, the team has frequently brought our robots to recruitment events and open houses that our school has put on. The team also recruits members from schools throughout the area, and many of the students who join the team from other schools end up attending our school in their 11th and 12th grade years after their experience with the team.

Additionally, we recently rebuilt the display/trophy case in our schools front lobby as it had been full of outdated information on its display and was falling apart due to poor construction. It now prominently features our team logo (which we are working to make the schools mascot, as it doesn't currently have one), and space for trophies from all the schools programs (though, admittedly, most of them are from the robotics team).

[DarkRune]

Is your school public or private? Public school
How many years has your team been in existence? 4 years
What support does your school or district give to your team (money, facilities, other donations)? We're allowed to use half of a physics classroom for our workshop, and the district has hindered the attempts for us to build a small workshop on campus, or to be included in the new building currently being built.
What does your overall team budget look like? What portion of that budget is contributed by your school? A large part of our budget is contributed by the school alumni association. Our budget is for 1 or 2 off season competitions, an inner team robotics competition (Our team splits into groups and builds small scale robots for a competition), and then regionals and the robots (practice and competition)..
Does the school provide faculty and/or co-curricular paid positions for the team? If so, how many? There are two teachers for our school's robotics course. 1 is a computer science teacher and the other is a physics teacher. Both only have one course of robotics and the rest are normal.
Does your district have FLL/FTC teams as well? How are those funded/supported in relation to FRC? There are multiple FLL teams in our district, mostly supported by us but I'm not sure about funding.
Does your school have a robotics course or series of programs? Is FRC worked on during these hours? We have a two year robotics course. Year one is an intro to programming and electronics. Year two is for veteran members and we use this class to work on FRC related stuff (Build season, off season, etc.).
What does your team do for your school? Bring home the occasional award for the trophy case, demonstrate at some school functions, working on a t-shirt cannon for school rallies. Lots of computer repair and stuff is done by our team, and we work on the odd project or something for like theater or journalism.

If you have other questions, or need me to clarify something just ask or shoot me a PM

[Alex2614]

Is your school public or private? We are a "community" team, not affiliated with any one school. Our students come primarily from two rival high schools, but also from surrounding public and private schools. We also have several homeschooled students on our team.

How many years has your team been in existence? 8 years.

What support does your school or district give to your team (money, facilities, other donations)? Our school board donates money to MARS, and also recently provided a practice building. We do not meet regularly at the practice building (still meet at WVU), but we put a field in there, and also run some summer events there. MARS has to pay for upkeep, maintenance, renovations, and utilities; and when we got it, it needed some MAJOR overhauls. We have pumped several thousand dollars into the building, but thanks to the generous donation from the school board, we didn't have to buy it or pay rent This is by far the biggest donation. They also provide access to the middle school next to the building to run outreach events, FLL practices, and open house events.

What does your overall team budget look like? What portion of that budget is contributed by your school? MARS operates on a budget of approximately $65,000 per year. The Board of Education contributes in cash approximately $6,000 (depending on the year). A lot of this money goes back into paying for FLL events, FLL teams, registrations, etc. Our team budget pays for student/mentor travel, hotel rooms, outreach events, building maintenance, etc. in addition to the "robot stuff" and registration fees.

Does the school provide faculty and/or co-curricular paid positions for the team? If so, how many? No. We have been trying to make this happen for FLL, and we were met with adamant opposition. We will keep trying, though! It's a dream of ours. But all of our FRC mentors are volunteers.

Does your district have FLL/FTC teams as well? How are those funded/supported in relation to FRC? Yes, there are numerous FLL teams at the various elementary/middle schools in our area as well as several private teams. There is one FTC team at a middle school, but I admittedly am unsure about the funding stream for this team. I do know that they are not drowning in cash, though. They have to raise much of their funds (if not all) on their own. MARS assists in funding several of the FLL teams, but some of the individual schools also contribute to the school-based teams.

Does your school have a robotics course or series of programs? Is FRC worked on during these hours? No. We do not do robotics at all during regular school hours. Again, a dream of ours, and it is happening at the middle school FLL level, but not yet for FRC.

What does your team do for your school? Because we are not a recognized school activity (we are a school board activity, but the individual schools have traditionally been reluctant to recognize MARS), there is not a whole lot we can do for the two main high schools. We have participated in several events throughout the years such as career fairs, student org fairs, homecoming, etc.

Hope this helps!