How much does your school support your FIRST Team?

[jamie_1930]

Last year our school discontinued the FRC program because the head mentor was laid off and no one was willing to step up to the position, so 1930 died. Although several of us joined 2228 at a neighbor school so we drive there every night to work.

This year although our school tried to bring FIRST back with the start of an FTC team, 3750, and we're proud to say we took 2nd at Clarkson.

[ICntIHaveRbtics]

I'm bumping up this thread in order to bring more attention to it.
We just recently did a presentation to our school board and collected a petition of signatures to get funding for the robotics program in our town. They asked for examples of school support/funding for the deliberative session, and I have collected some of the examples in this thread so far. Any more examples would be greatly appreciated!

[ehochstein]

Have you shown the video with President Obama in it and a FIRST robot?

[Captain banana]

I would love our school to give us more attention, but sadly we are over shadowed by the standard sterotypes of geeks and robotics. I'm here to tell the world, THAT ROBOTS ARE THE FUTURE AND ARE JUST FREAKING AWESOME!!!! No man is going to contain my burn for robots!

[cyberstorm1000]

We are a team made of 3 schools and home schooled kids we get no funding from niether schools or a place to work. Our schools support us none at all, all funding comes from companies.

[Scott T.]

My whole campus is divided into 3 separate schools, so the other 2 schools know little or nothing about our team. My separate school is supported by some of the other students. They sometimes ask questions about what our team does (the question I get the most is "So do you guys build fighting robots?"). The staff at my school, though, find our team to be quite interesting and love the idea of it all. So I can pretty much say that, overall, my school is quite supported.

[Sean Raia]

I believe our school gives us a good amount of cash, but I'm not sure.
As far as space and tools, we get very good support for that.
We get access to all of our tech rooms (3 classrooms with tons of computers, an electrical/programming room, and a shop) after school and on Saturday. Also we have a nice sized cage to keep our robot and all of our materials, parts, and extra tools in.

As far as being recognized by the other students, robotics is not that well known in our school.

[ICntIHaveRbtics]

I just want to give an update after posting a few posts back.

A few weeks ago, we gave a presentation to the school board. We had to collect 25 registered voters signatures to be able to ask to be put on the ballot for funding. We presented the petition, as well as gave a presentation about the program and who we are and why we are requesting their support. We packed the room with students dressed in our team colors, as well as mentors, alumni, and parents. We showed the PBS newshour clip of FIRST from a little while back, and alumni talked about how the program "pays off". We connected FIRST to the mission statement of the school, and were able to answer any questions they had. Their only concern was the fact that this "club" would get more money than any other club, thus what would happen if other clubs came asking for money? Valid question, but we made them realise that we're not your typical "club", we're kind of like a hybrid between a club & a sport. Overall, it was met by the school board, whom in the past has been kind of ignorant to the program, with overwhelming support --- unanimous support!

Later on, the budget committee met and voted 5-1 in favor of supporting the team. And last night, we had the deliberative session where the town comes and mulls over all the articles on the ballot. We were allowed to talk for five minutes and we even got our t-shirt launcher to shoot a t-shirt over the crowd. Nobody that was present from the town had any questions or was negative towards the idea, so now it's down to March 9th and the people of the town to decide!

This is an example of a team that once used to say, "we'll never get support from our school district. we're always going to have to fend for ourselves..." and now it's really happening because WE made the effort to make it happen. Like everything else in life, you can't just expect the school to one day come to you and say "hey, we're going to support you now". You gotta work for it, and show that your team deserves it, and that their support is really important to you. Find out what it takes to get on your school board budget, and make it happen.

[rsisk]

Way to go 1058! A truly inspirational story.

[Gofure]

Not sure about money or anything like that, but the only time you hear robotics being mentioned by a student is "The robotics club should do battle bots"

[nitneylion452]

They gave us the old weight room to work in. It's a fairly large space. Only downfall is the leaky roof, which is not good for electronics.

[qwertyuiop[]\]

i am one of the two students from my team that got to go to the white house with our robot. It hasnt increased support in my school for robotics that much. We got an article in the school newspaper and segment on the daily tv news at our school. my school basically gives us the shop (vertical and horizontal band saws, table saw, drill presses, oven, power miter box; all of which were meant for wood which we had to outfit with new blades for metal + a 3 in 1 lathe drillpress mill which the team went 75-25(we paid 75%) on buying it with the school), CAD lab , a closet, some trophy cases in obscure locations where not many people go, and about $500. we also hosted an FTC regional qualifying event(~15 teams) in gym and the school let use its power carts (power for basically 200+ laptops used for standardized testing) and the adminstration was reasonably helpful. However we still lack teachers support. Most teachers are too busy with other clubs and their own work. We have the CAD teacher who lends us his room, and thats about it. We are extremely lucky to have the mentors that we do.

[_Tanto_]

our school really gets excited about our team .... people who arent on the team can be seen walking around with our team gear on.
Its pretty sweet

[-42-]

We recieve no support. At all.

Yay for California budget crisis.

[SammyKay]

Our team is a combination of all the high schools in our county since our county is small. we have approximately 400 kids at each school, the majority of them not even knowing or caring about the team at all. Of our 15 students on the team, my high school has provided 7 of them. My high school is pretty supportive of it. Like, when the Engineering Program that is offered through the vocational school in our county does a presentation at my high school, they allow us to bring our demo/practice bot to show off and we bring a sign up sheet to get more potential students. And at Open House they let us bring the robot too to show off. But that's about the extent of the publicity of the team at my high school other than word of mouth. The other schools in the county don't publicize the team that much either.