REQUEST - Are you a Multi-School Team?

[Amanda Aldridge]

DISCLAIMER: I am alumni and not currently involved with the team, but I was a member for 3+ years. Current stats may be slightly different.

*Team Name / Number: 71 Team Hammond
* Team Location: Hammond, Indiana
* How many student team members: varies year to year. usually 20-25
* How many schools:4
* Breakdown - how many students from each of the schools (generally): When I was on the team, 2 of the schools had about 7-10 students each and the other 2 made up the remainder
* How do you organize your team with multiple schools: Meetings are held at the Area Career Center, which is a Vocational Tech program that students from schools all over the county attend for part of the day (This is not one of the 4 schools, although i'm not sure if an ACC student that wasn't from one of the four Hammond high schools could join). It's in a central location of town, and the Teacher Advisors (or whatever you'd like to call them) are School City employees who aren't affiliated with any of the 4 schools.
* What are pros / cons you have seen given your arrangement: Pros- high schools in our town are fairly small and without the 4-school arrangement, chances are good that we wouldn't have had a team. Plus, as a citywide team, the whole city really rallied around us and we get more recognition than we would if we were just a Gavit/Hammond High/Morton/Clark individual team. Cons- At least at the school I went to, getting support from your school can be difficult because it's not a "school" thing, as in, that specific school. Some teachers were difficult about makeup work and missed days due to competition for that reason.
* Do you have any advice to other teams who may want to do something similar: Make it a school-district sponsored thing if possible, for the simple reason that if issues like the ones I described above arise, you have the school board/superintendent/other VIP to back you up. (Yes, I had a "VIP" once intervene on my behalf with one particularly difficult teacher.)