How much does your school support your FIRST Team?

[XXShadowXX]

to answer the question, let us have one no funding what so ever

[Andrew Schreiber]

Wow, no one from RUSH commented yet.

27 is very heavily supported by Clarkston, to the point of we brought the school board president down on the bus with us to nationals. For the life of me Im not sure why he would WANT to be on a bus with 30 smelly high schoolers. But whats better? He stuck around. As for school support, RUSH is part of OSMTech and when OSMTech moved to Clarkston part of the deal was that 27 came along.

As for 397, the school lets us in the building... does that count? (Actually they may support us more but I don't generally have much to do with them so Im not sure)

[rdlevy1215]

Over the years, our school system has gradually increased their support for the district Robotics team. They have decided to become a major sponsor, of around 8K per year, and students as well as staff are beginning to realize that the "Robotics TEAM" is not a joke, but something real and deserving of respect. Since our district proclaims itself as the "eLearning District," it's great that they are supporting us. In addition, their support continued this year so that we may host a post season event, Pascack Panda-monium, in October.

[metR]

At the beginning of the season our team was not appriciated/noticed by the school's admin, but as the season went on people began to wonder who those crazy kids driving robots down the halls after school were. Although we didn't get any money from the school this year and we were stuck in a classroom, we were allowed into the school on weekends and were allowed into the show(for short peroids of closly-supervised time). The team has built up alot of support from teachers and it seams that we've got a great response from the student body, and we might even get our own room and $$ from the school budget next year!

[martschr]

Just a couple of days ago one of my teachers announced that our schools FIRST team won the Bayou Regional, and someone turned to me and said what's FIRST. I said she is talking about Bomb Squad then they knew what she was talking about. I guess is good that we are known at our school, but that is about it were just known not much more than that. It seems to me that many of us have the same story about our school support. Even if the school can't be a big financial supporter it can still provide a lot of moral support, and it can lend its support in other ways. If we want our schools to support FIRST then we will have to make it happen. I think this thread has gotten to the point where we need to start throwing out ideas of how to fix the problem. Some people said they invited their school administration to regionals and got support that way. That is a start our superintendent went to one of our regionals and that didn't change much. What else can we do? This is what FIRST is about spotting a problem and solving it. What ideas do we have to help solve this problem? Not just for us, but for everybody who wants FIRST to grow.

[cbale2000]

Unfortunately our team doesn't get much in terms of help from our school, we get to use some empty space for our 1/2 playing field and thats about it, no funding, and very little support.

I envy teams that are lucky enough to have community that cares, because no amount of advertising, demonstrating, ect, seems to have any effect for getting people interested for us. We even tried to get a few of the local new channels to come check out a few of the events we hosted, only to have them not return our calls (quite rude).


Guess we just have to keep trying.

[fatjoe3833]

The support, financial or otherwise, that my team received from the school district was pretty much limited to the initial entry fee plus the use of a small room in the basement with a few 40 year old plus power tools. This may seem generous to many people, but it is ridiculous when compared to the support that our athletic teams receive. A recently approved multi million dollar bond proposal called for the construction of a new field and renovations to the gym but no improvements for science or technology programs. It's easy to see why the U.S. is quickly falling behind when it comes to science and technology.

Most of the administration and students just do not understand what FIRST is all about. For many students, the robotics team was the biggest joke in the high school and our athletic teams were the greatest thing ever.

We certainly did try to raise awareness about the team and FIRST. There were plenty of photo ops with the administration and local politicians after we won the Long Island Regional in 2007. We gave a presentation to the school board every year. We also presented the robot every year at the pep rally. Most of the students and some teachers would laugh or make sarcastic comments as the team was introduced and the robot was shown off.

I am not trying to complain or rant and rave. We were very fortunate to have the school provide us with funding. I am just trying to show how the U.S. is falling behind when it comes to science and technology. Improving support in local schools for programs such as FIRST will help to resolve this problem.

[David Dawson]

Our School greatly supports our team. Robotics Is an actual class which students get grades and credits for. Our Lead mentor is the AP physics teacher, Our class room is a metal shop. Last year the art teacher painted our bot green with silver flames!
And my school Cass Tech hosts a regional, which is great because we are the home team! In total the school gives us around 85% of everything.

[ICntIHaveRbtics]

1058 has been in a continuous struggle with the school district since its conception. Unfortunately allegations have been made against members of the team stealing computer equiptment and breaking hardware which have never been proven to be true. There is no inside support when it comes to having at teacher at the school who is also a mentor. All of our mentors are either parents or employees of our sponsors.

Our mentors are given a stipend of around 2k a year to split amongst however many there are as their "pay" for mentoring. Of course, they never keep the money - they put it right into the team account. Aside from the use of our metal shop, we don't receive any funding from the school district. We rely soley on community donations and business sponsorship. We also compete with the "World Famous Lancer Marching Band" and 1353572047203 Athletic organizations that are basically 2/3 of the reason why Londonderry exists. They get funding from the town, but they always have their hands out for more money.

But ever since I've been on the team, the support from the community has slowly been on a rise. Pushing for more media coverage and public demonstration opportunities as well as mass mailings to businesses to let them know what we're doing has helped. We've convinced our principal to come to the live kickoff in Manchester with us, and we're working on getting on the school budget ballot for $7k a year to pay for our registration and some spare parts.

It has only taken seven years to get to this point. Best words of advice are don't let any pot holes get you down. Just because the school may drop the ball here or there, you gotta just keep on top of them. You have to make yourselves hard to be ignored [graciously, of course!].

[chris 545]

Our school basically buys whatever we need, though we don't try to push our luck. We have a small but functioning workshop that has every tool we need. We are allowed to stay very late after school, and can come on saturday's during the build period. Robotics is a class, as well as an after-school club, so people hear about it. The school also buys us team shirts and hats, though this year we have decided to trade the hats for sweatshirts.

[dmlawrence]

1751 receives moderate support from our school district. No financial support is provided, but the team is given 24/7 access to a 15' by 30' working area in a shed near the high school. The administration and school board are enthusiastic about the robotics program.

[seannoseworthy]

Our school board (Halton District School Board) has not provided us with any support for the past two years, until recently they gave every team in the district $2400. As for our school they have coverd our debt for the past two years until they said not this year i guess thats the budget cuts. Though the school is not exactly rushing to help the team, a tailer company has been generous enough to provide us a trailer in excahnge for a tax recipt, we have been waiting two to three months for and they have not started the process yet. Then there is the matter of registration we would be lucky if we can get it before build season. I dont think were that well know in our comunity, but in our school we do a presentation for all the incoming students. We just got a new vice principle this year from OTHS who really loves FIRST so thats a good asset in the school. Most of the tech/science/computer/admisistrators come to the competitions which is good, the friday of the competions we will try to stream the live video from the competitions for everyone to see at the school to increse our exposure.

[ttakashima]

Our school and school district support is generally good, though not a lot of money comes in. Farrington, however has given us part of the old auto shop which has been out of operation for two years (19ft x 54ft), and a side storage/programming room (12ftx12ft). We have 24/7 access to this area. We also have access to our schools Metal and Wood shops. The Teachers in these shops leave school anywhere between 4 and 5PM (School ends - 3PM) so we do not have much time in the shops.

Our Principal loves the robotics team and what it's doing for our schools image (She came down to the Hawaii regional for the past two years). We are known as the "Bad school" here in Hawaii because many live in a very low income area. 70% of our students are on the free or reduced lunch program. Most students look at robotics as the team for nerds or geeks so we only have about 20 stable members (Out of 2500)... Boy are they wrong . Over this past semester team 2504 has presented at our schools club rush week and recruited nearly 40 new people (Only about 15 stayed after our first meeting). We have also presented at our school community meeting.

As for money our school has provided about $1500 for our VEX teams and none for our FIRST team as of now(We mostly use grant money). I don't remember last year's budget but I believe all of our money came from grants. Since I mentor these robotics teams year round I get paid part time, but most of that money goes back to the team in the form of Food and parts. The advisor for team 2504 also gives a lot back to the team. She spends a lot of her time (After her 2 in progress PhDs and teacher of the year travel) finding grants and sponsorship opportunities for our team to apply for.

[apalrd]

School - they provide a class room for the OCCRA team to use, a teacher mentor and a little funding.

Chrysler, our primary sponsor - We are one of the first (are we the first?) Chrysler-sponsored teams, and they provide us with our own shop (at the Chrysler tech center), use of nearby shops with other tools (welding and such), a CAD/Computer room with a bunch of their old computers (which are good enough for us), use of a conference room, and allow us to build a playing field and store old robots in a storage/maintenance basement. They also provide most of our non-parent mentors and most of our funding.

[jsasaki]

Our school may not support us financially but we do get publicity. We get into out school newsletter, community papers, and school websites but thats about it. In addition to this we get a 3 workshops 2 classrooms and the entire school. We get invited to a school-wide even called showcase baldwin which shows off clubs and teams to the school and community.(the mayor came) This may be off topic but we get support from the governor and get lei's at the airport when we attend the hawaii regional. Oh and last year one of or VP's flew in to oahu to attend the Hawaii regional which was great.