pic: Histogram of # years active for teams that have dropped out

[Oblarg]

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04

The lack of staff is inexcusable. I have seen it happen locally. The teacher/mentor can't/won't do it next year and the team folds. Why would the administration allow this? if the track coach left, someone would volunteer/voluntold to take the position. Since it's not a sport, it's allowed to fade away.

Many teams, even those in schools, effectively operate without any school support at all. 449 pays around $6000 per year to use a classroom on weekends during build season. We've never been unable to find a teacher sponsor, luckily, but if we found ourselves without one next year the onus would be on us to convince someone else to do it.

Also, lack of mentorship extends beyond requirements like having a teacher sponsor - if you lose a lot of your technical mentorship as a 1- or 2-year team, there's little chance the team will be left with enough institutional knowledge to build robots reliably or educate new members. Moreover, team administration requires a group of people to share the burden, or else one extremely dedicated person with a lot of devotion and spare time. Even if you have a teacher sponsor, that alone is not enough - the amount of human resources required to keep an FRC team functional are quite massive.