School Board Problems

[KevinB]

Originally Posted by Jay H 237

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'm going to do three things: Answer your questions, write up an explanation of how OUR team operates, and then try to relate that to what you can do.

Do we build our robot at our school?
Yes, but this is the first year we have been graced with such a privledge. We've been around for 4 years, and we have jumped many many hoops to get our on-campus building (which I actually like less than the previous alternatives ... it is tiny!) The first two years we had a room at our corporate sponsor's location, last year we lost that sponsor and managed to borrow some space in the back of a warehouse.

As for the other questions about the school building, we do not pay for it and there are few restrictions on it, other than we must use the standard student parking, which is quite a walk (there is only faculty parking near the building).

Our school system provides no money directly to the team, however they do pay an undisclosed stipend to the teachers that lead the team (they do this for all major clubs). And yes, our school system allows the donations made specifically to our team to remain in our control.

By no means has it always been this way. Here's the general saga of Robotics at Arab High School: When it first started, it was competition with other school systems. Our superintendant wanted us to be the "technology powerhouse" of the county and refused to let us mentor or attempt to start other teams. It has taken until this year to break this mentality within the higher-ups. This year we finally managed to get a team started at our "football rival" high school, and we have mentored them successfully. It was not until we gave a presentation to a group of prominent county leaders who were very impressed with our collaboration that our principals and superintendant saw the benefits of this mentorship.

Up until this year, there was a general notion among the school board, principals and superintendants that our team didn't really provide the learning that we claimed. They thought that our team was nothing but engineer-driven with kids watching. (Boy were they wrong.) We proved them wrong in that regard this year -- we lost ALL of our corporate sponsors (NASA and PMI), yet I think our robot is the most competitive it has ever been. This year's robot is 100% student built and only one engineer has ever set foot into our building (the parent of one of our team members).

It is only now that they really see the educational benefits of our program. We used to be nothing more than a source of bragging rights over the other school systems.

It is imperative that you convince your school board of the educational value of FIRST. GET THEM TO A REGIONAL! PAY THEIR WAY! I recognize how hard this is, none of our principals or superintendants have ever come to a regional.

Recognizing this difficulty, this year we have invited a member of the local newspaper to accompany us to regionals and nationals. He has promised us a spread filled with details of his experience. We hope that this will be a good influence on the school administration that refuses to come to competition. (If you want a copy when it's published, I'll gladly send you one).

In conclusion, I can't imagine why any school would not want to support FIRST if they really knew what it is. The problem is that many administrators and ignorant and apathetic. Figure out how to break through that, and you'll be on your way.