NASA Budget Cuts // Help save FIRST teams by writing a letter.

[dlavery]

I can neither confirm nor deny what might or might not be in the 2009 President's budget submission. I just can not comment on that.

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

I believe this just underlines the importance of doing Dean's homework and getting your state and federal legislators involved in promoting and funding FIRST programs directly. Instead of continuing to fund FIRST teams through federal money budgeted to NASA, let's see FIRST teams funded through federal money budgeted directly for FIRST and other similar educational science and technology programs.

Just one comment regarding a fine point of how the Federal budget is implemented. Congress cannot just allocate funding for FIRST and send it to them. It has to go through one of the department/agency budgets. So for FIRST (or FIRST teams) to receive Federal funds, at least one Federal agency (such as NASA, NSF, Department of Education, etc.) must be involved, must receive the appropriated funds from Congress, and then allocate the funding to FIRST (or the teams) as part of their annual budget/procurement process.

Originally Posted by Travis Hoffman

I have another somewhat-related question. Outside of the FIRST NASA grant program, which is open to all schools, I was wondering if the benefits of other REP activities were "regionalized" around NASA operations throughout the country. Basically, does every American school have access to these benefits, or typically, do schools near NASA facilities share in the bulk of the benefit? Looking for concrete examples. If it turns out these benefits were somewhat-regionalized, then perhaps a better method could be developed to see that the benefits are amplified and extended to reach every student in every school?

There are multiple elements of the NASA Robotics Alliance Project. Most of them are open and available to any U.S. school that wants to participate, without geographic restriction (e.g. the FRC Growth Grants, the NASA Robotics Curriculum Clearinghouse and the on-line robotics courses). Some of them (such as the FRC Regional Challenge Grants) are coupled to a particular competition event at a particular location, but any team from anywhere in the country may apply to participate. A minor fraction of the RAP activities are targeted at supporting the local communities around the various NASA field centers (e.g. support for the FRC “house teams” at each NASA field center). We believe this mix of project types and distributions is appropriate, and do not plan on changing this profile in 2008.

-dave