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.)

[gburlison]

* Team Name / Number ~ Rocky Mountain Robotics / 662
* Team Location ~ Colorado Springs, CO
* How many student team members ~ Approx 50
* How many schools ~ Students from 4 High Schools are eligible, this year however, we only have students from 3 schools

* Breakdown - how many students from each of the schools (generally)
~ One of the great things about how our team works is that the students work so well together as a team, I forget that they are in different schools (long story short, I dont know)

* How do you organize your team with multiple schools ~ None of our schools have a good shop so we build in a borrowed location. Web and animation are done in one schools computer lab.

* What are pros / cons you have seen given your arrangement
~ Biggest Pro is that we are sponsored by the school district and get funding from them. We are able to recruit from a larger pool of students.
~ Biggest Con is that since we are not attached to any one school, a build location has been a challenge. This is more result of the fact that none of our schools has a suitable shop. I do think that if we were a single school team, we would have a better chance of finding a permanent place to build at that school. Additionally, since we are not attached to a school, the administration in each High School does not see our team as part that school and does not provide much recognition of our accomplishments. Working around the schedules of 3 or 4 different schools can be a challenge.
* Do you have any advice to other teams who may want to do something similar
~ Multiple schools have allowed our team to grow much faster than we could have if we were limited to students from one school. Seek out the principals from each school and try to convince them of the value of FIRST. Try to get them to a regional competition to see the students all full of spirit.

[Matt_Kaplan1902]

* Team Name / Number- Team 108 SigmaC@Ts
* Team Location- Fort Lauderdale, Florida
* How many student team members- About 40
* How many schools- 2 Taravella (my school) and Dillard
* Breakdown - how many students from each of the schools (generally)- Taravella 7 and Dillard 30+
* How do you organize your team with multiple schools- We have all meetings at Motorola and have a Yahoo Group set up for announcements, etc.
* What are pros / cons you have seen given your arrangement- The only bad thing right now is the decline in the club at Taravella. 4 years ago (my freshmen year) our teacher retired and until this year haven't had another. But our new leader has done an amazing job thus far. With only 3 returning students (all 4 year team members) we had to try and recruit younger members. We have 3 of the seven members on our mechanical team and the other 4 on software. Whats great about our arrangement is that we have bridged the gap between rival schools and have dis-proven many stereotypes about each other school and its student.
* Do you have any advice to other teams who may want to do something similar- One the most important things is that the schools are close enough that is isn't too far for all members to attend meetings, and that all schools are in good communication with another.

[Mr MOE]

Continued thanks for all who are posting with their FIRST Multi-school team information! Keep the multi-team information coming!

If any of you or your teammates are interested in open discussions regarding multi-school teams, please plan to attend the upcoming FRC Conference Session on the topic, hosted by me (John Larock of MOE 365) and Kathie Kentfield of RAGE 173.

Unfortunately, our FRC Conference session has the misfortune of overlapping with Opening Ceremonies. However, for those who do attend, we will have a nifty little limited edition giveaway and some handouts.

More info coming soon...

[DougHogg]

Team 980, the ThunderBots
S. California
25 members
4 schools plus students from other schools

* How do you organize your team with multiple schools
We go around to the four schools that sponsor our team and do presentations to recruit new members. Teachers from 3 of the schools support the team, and those are schools with the most members on the team.

Our team leader this year is a parent whose son goes to one of the schools. We recruit mentors from the community and each student works to sell raffle tickets or find sponsors.

* What are pros / cons you have seen given your arrangement

Pros:
The founding school was too small to sustain a team, so having multiple schools has allowed our team to continue and grow.

Cons:
Currently, none of the schools are able to provide a work space, so we use a facility in a sponsors warehouse many miles away. That reduces the exposure of other students to the team and cuts down on new recruits.

* Do you have any advice to other teams who may want to do something similar
We have opened our team up to other students whose schools don't have teams. Sometimes people hear about us from our web site. This is a great way to help spread the word about FIRST as these students can then pass the word on to other students at their own schools.

I would recommend having regular meetings starting right after the current season to recruit new members, locate additional mentors, line up sponsors, find machine shop help, etc.

[IMDWalrus]

I'm not sure how accurate the information is; particularly the breakdown between schools. Still, I'll give it a shot..

* Team Name / Number: Team 818 (Genesis '02)
* Team Location: Warren, MI
* How many student team members: I'd guess 40
* How many schools: Three high schools, and the district's math/science center.
* Breakdown - how many students from each of the schools (generally): The amount from the three high schools should be similar, although there isn't any minimum number per school that I'm aware of. The math/science center is a bit stickier; you can be in both the math/science center and one of the other high schools. I'd guess that there are about ten students coming solely from the math/science center.
* How do you organize your team with multiple schools: We meet at GM's Tech Center or at the math/science center, which are less than a mile apart and as close to a central location as we can find. If information needs to be given to team members, the people in charge are the teacher mentors from that high school.
* What are pros / cons you have seen given your arrangement: The pro is that it allows the team to exist, as I don't think any of the schools would have enough interest to support the team on their own. There haven't been very many cons beyond an occasional challege of getting info out between meetings; because we actually do have the ability to use GM's facilities when needed, work space hasn't been an issue yet.
* Do you have any advice to other teams who may want to do something similar: Go for it. If you can get the district(s) to agree to it, you'll be able to get more people involved than you would have otherwise.

[Eugenia Gabrielov]

* Team Name / Number: Westside Boiler Invasion, Team 461
* Team Location: West Lafayette, IN
* How many student team members: Varies, usually between 40-60
* How many schools: 2
* Breakdown - how many students from each of the schools (generally): About 75% from West Lafayette HighSchool and 25% from Harrison, this year it was a bit less from Harrison and a bit more from West Lafayette
* How do you organize your team with multiple schools: We start early with callouts and meetings and materials. Harrison High School is holding a callout for students after the Championship Event, and WLHS usually holds a callout in early early fall. Most of our communication is through the web: the website is very popular with students and they're able to see calendars months in advance at the click of a mouse. By using an attendance system based on sub-teams and not schools, we even out the playing field a bit as to it not mattering much what school an individual is from, since the two schools are within 20 minutes of each other.
* What are pros / cons you have seen given your arrangement: Right now we have a lot more from one school or the other, which kinda makes it a bit difficult to attract other kids becuase it's not meeting at thier school. We do our best to overcome the location factor by encouraging presentations and working with students from other schools on their schedules.
* Do you have any advice to other teams who may want to do something similar: An inter-school relationship is a huge advantage for a successful team. Different schools have different personalities, and sometimes even rivalries between one another. By encouraging students from different schools to work closely together, we build connections and (hopefully) eliminate stereotypes about the schools.

[Logan Byers]

Correction: We were a multi-school team. Jefferson split and formed 1646, and Harrison will be having a call-out the week after the Championship Event.