School Board Problems

[Nathan Pell]

Originally Posted by Jay H 237

I'm glad to see this thread and now knowing our team isn't alone with similar issues. I was asked by our teams main advisor to post this on here. What we what to know is if team 237 can unify and work with other teams so we're (we meaning all teams with similar issues) aren't stepped on. As Jessica mentioned in post # 12 in this thread " we are dealing with a difficult one". Jess and I are talking about the same school board.
I have a few questions for other teams but first I'll give some background on my team.
Team 237 Sie-H2O-Bots was formed in 1998 and is based out of the Watertown Connecticut high school. We currently have roughly 30 students and 14 mentors. Two of the mentors are teachers at this school, one of them is the teams main contact. Our team is 100% self funded, no money from the board of ed or town for that matter supports our team. Our team is also a 501c3 organization (tax exempt) and has been since it's creation. The problem is the board of ed does not and has never reconized our team. We pay for the schools use, meaning custodial coverage, from our own team budget. Our team relies strictly on donations and when you're handed a $2000.00 bill at the end of the six weeks it hurts. Sports and any other organizations get to use the building for free. Our team also has had over $100,000 in equipment and services donated to the school because of our team. This includes machinery for the tech ed department, computers, 10 stations of Solid Works for the cad room, and countless other stuff. We got all this stuff for the school to use also, it is not strictly for our team. We also have had problems where they almost weren't going to allow our team to travel. Students have to keep passing grades to be on our team. We have countless other problems and could go on here forever but I won't.
What I also want to ask is:

Does your team build your robot at your school?

Do you have restrictions on building use?

What procedures do you have to go through to use this building?

Also if you do use the school,

Do you have to pay to use school facilities?

What amount of monetary support is your school providing your team?

How do you handle donations made to the school on behalf of the robot team?

Any insight, help, and/or answers are greatly appreciated. Our team feels we have more than our share of red tape. We also feel we have jumped through more hoops than Barnum and Baily.

I am the team leader and teacher for team 1083.

Does your team build your robot at your school? - YES!

- I have a code so that we can work on weekends, and when the school is not normally open. We are allowed to work at the school until 9pm; We were given special permission to stay at the school over night a few times, and work until 11pm other days

Do you have to pay to use school facilities?We do not have to pay for school facilities unless the school is closed. (We have to pay for custodial use when we host our tournamentt during the summer)

Luckily for us, my administrator is on the board for the reginal committee, and is very supportive of having the team. He does a lot of the "fighting" for us.

What amount of monetary support is your school providing your team?
Last year, our school principal wanted to start the team, so she gave us $10,000 to get started; this year we did not get anything

How do you handle donations made to the school on behalf of the robot team?
We have an internal account at the school, and I deposit all of the checks we get as donations. I write a receipt for the donor, and just deposit the checks. It is like having a little bank inside of the school I can then write Purchase Orders on the money we have in our account.

I hope this helps. Belive me, we run into a lot of red tape. It took a lot of convincing for the school to allow students to work past 11pm on a school night. We gave a lot of presentations (the students did) and it has been a good experience so far.