REQUEST - Are you a Multi-School Team?

[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.