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Unread 07-02-2010, 12:24
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Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?

I have been a parent helping the team for 8 years & now do it as a volunteer & Mentor. The team is split between 2 schools. As a lot of you know, we host the FIRST preseason Suffield Shakedown scrimmage. Suffield is gracious enough to supply the Gym & most of the school for the scrimmage. We totally take over the school on that Saturday, filling every available parking spot on sight. Janitors are supplied for both Friday night set-up & all of Saturday. The team regularly post messages on the Marque in the Cafe Commons area keeping the school up to date. Windsor Locks supplies classroom, a dedicated machine shop & practice room, and access to the comp lab & wood shop. They also help fund bus fees and other expenses. Mind you it is an ongoing battle to keep them in the loop & interested in the team. One day my goal is to have a sign erected at each school showing support of the teams. Last year, the computer science teacher retired after serving over at least 35 years in Suffield. It was touch & go as to whether there would be a Suffield teacher representing, but it was fulfilled & the teacher is a willing & energetic mentor.
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Unread 07-02-2010, 12:53
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Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?

I'd like to say our school supports the team quite well:

- Our coach is the only engineering teacher at the school
- Our room is his classroom, where we have access to the school CAD lab (not the most powerful computers, but they all come with the software on them)
- The school helped us convert the old photography darkroom into our workroom
- We've got virtually unlimited access to the school's metal shop, woodshop, and welding (the welding teacher helps us out on occasion too)

The only thing we're actually lacking from the school is financial support and widespread recognition throughout the school.
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Unread 07-02-2010, 13:03
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Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?

We almost didn't have a team this year due to a lack of financial sponsors, and now we've got more support from the school than we've had since I joined the team 4 years ago. Most of the administration is aware of our presence and needs, the school district's foundation has given us money, and will continue to do so, the school has promised to work more closely with us. They even want us to meet year-round and do other non-FIRST projects, such as working with the middle-school to gain interest or showcasing robots at community events. Even the janitors are working with us more than before. With the unfortunate cutting of most of the school's vocational programs, we have access to more rooms (though we lost access to a few due to district storage taking old rooms).

Overall, we're starting to get the support from our school that we need to promote and expand the robotics program, and we're really excited for it.
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Unread 15-02-2010, 02:38
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Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?

Our school allows us to use the metal shop and tools. The school system is suportive, however we recieve little recognition from fellow students, outside of our friends not much is known about our team exept for the odviuse towering robots in the tech department, and the fact that we have a giant robotic arm (no idea where it came from but its realy cool, we took out the sealing once).
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Unread 15-02-2010, 04:45
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Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?

Our school provides a small amount of money, a great tech lab that we can use whenever we want (it's our Team Leader's classroom), and we are well known amongst the students and faculty, even if it is only because we hold food sales to raise funds. All-in-all, I would say that we get a good deal of support for our Team, but we're still working on getting more recognition.
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Unread 15-02-2010, 18:19
machetemonkey machetemonkey is offline
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Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?

I'm really not sure how to feel about the support our team gets.

Our school is small (~260 kids grades 7-12), and the administration has been helpful whenever we need it. Although not financially supportive at all, our director has been supportive throughout, helping us contact other schools for potential team members and helping us figure out how to be financially independent, keeping track of our own finances as opposed to going through the school (which becomes very beauroucratic). Our teachers have been supportive, with one mentoring us (his mentorship is no longer hands on, but he continues to help greatly with organization and networking), and most teachers acknowledging the challenges of the build season and helping us out (extensions on assignments during the final build week, etc).

However, as far as student support goes, our team is next to nothing. Everyone in the school is well aware of our existence, yet doesn't give us a second thought. The school is well on its way to recognizing FRC as a sport within our school community, however the students don't care. Our cheerleaders, despite our reminding them of how FRC is technically a sport in our school, or on a same level, have flat-out refused to cheer at our competitions, because we're viewed as too geeky or nerdy for them.

Oh well. I'm incredibly grateful for our administration's support, especially in helping us become more independent of our school specifically and work more as a collective of different schools. As for the student body, they'll come around with time.
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Unread 15-02-2010, 22:31
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Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?

Unfortunately, living in a redneck podunk town results in a very sports-centered school district.

The most "funding" our school will give us is permission to sell ice cream at lunch and we even get complaints from teachers about that because kids eat ice cream during lunch.

(facepalm.)
North Idaho sucks.
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Unread 15-02-2010, 22:41
Akash Rastogi Akash Rastogi is offline
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Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?

Quote:
Originally Posted by mayde View Post
Unfortunately, living in a redneck podunk town results in a very sports-centered school district.

The most "funding" our school will give us is permission to sell ice cream at lunch and we even get complaints from teachers about that because kids eat ice cream during lunch.

(facepalm.)
North Idaho sucks.
Many teams start off like this. Don't let social conventions get you down. Keep at it, and eventually things do change. We started off in a town full of farmland, we're now the most respected program in our district. It takes time, but you will live through wonderful changes in your town.

We started off with 6 students and a shop teacher in an unheated wood shop room. No tools, no heat, and no power lead to strong efforts. We now have upwards of 100+ students, teachers, and mentors on our team, access to a robotics lab, metal shop, and a wood shop in the school. The district also funds our first regional and kit. They also support our team's districtwide robotics curriculum for K-12 students.
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Unread 18-02-2010, 19:47
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Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?

Quote:
Originally Posted by mayde View Post
Unfortunately, living in a redneck podunk town results in a very sports-centered school district.

The most "funding" our school will give us is permission to sell ice cream at lunch and we even get complaints from teachers about that because kids eat ice cream during lunch.

(facepalm.)
North Idaho sucks.
I agree, same school. Hah.
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Unread 22-06-2011, 18:21
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Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?

I've read the "stipend" threads as much as I can and I haven't seen this particular perspective addressed.

I agree that teachers should get a stipend from the school consistent with whatever is being provided to an athletic coach, band director, drama teacher or what have you.

What do you think about paying that teacher out of your corporate donations or other raised funds? Do you think your donators would agree that this is what they donated their money to support? Where do you draw the line or define the policy that your treasury can be spent on? Do you review those policies with your donators or do they tend to not ask questions about where the money goes?

I'm very interested in the community's take on this. I'm kind of new to all this and would like to level set my perspective with other's experience.

Thank you,
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Unread 27-10-2011, 22:22
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Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?

If you have ever seen our pit, it has a big sign over it. We do a new one each year.



If you ever saw the movie "The Jones'es" - it was filmed at Kell, these folks are actors. They are over 18 pretending to be high school aged hipsters. Look down the hall to the left at the wall clock.




Now look down the hall at the same clock as above - see the sign just past the clock :



So there you go, another sign, similiar to the one in the 1st photo. The sign was not installed into the school until after the movie was shot.



These banners and the sign is about as prominent as anything can be placed at this school. We have moral support, now we are working on the teacher incentive. That is a county issue.

.
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Unread 28-10-2011, 04:07
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Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?

Our team has been fortunate enough to have supported our school instead the past two years with technology, other teaching resources, and donations to community events.
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Unread 28-10-2011, 23:33
daniel_dsouza daniel_dsouza is offline
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Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?

Wow, compared to most of the teams here, I think we are pretty lucky.

Space:
Team 2134 is mainly student run, but we do have a teacher who is "in charge". As a teacher, he teaches the drafting, tech, autotech, and engineering classes. He is still pretty new to everything FIRST, so we are learning together. Becuase he is involved in all these classes, we have a moderately powerful computer lab (used for programming and CAD), a small machine shop (mainly for woodworking, but some metal working machines), and a storage closet (tools and robot materials) at our our disposal. Everything is indoors and connected to each other, which is a huge plus. However, we share everything with our school so we are expected to completely clean up, and share our storage space with really old computers.

Financial:
As of now, we don't receive any direct support (like a friendly $5k for registration) from our school, but we are hoping to change that. We recently changed principals, and I intend to ask him where he stands about FIRST (read our team). While we don't receive any direct support, our main mentor/teacher mentioned above works wonders with the ruling class (read district office) and managed to score a milling machine, lathe, and small 3D printer! All of our finances are managed through a club account, which is very cumbersome to use (see other threads for what I mean). We get about 20% of our finances from outside sources, 70% from club dues and tax credit, and 10% from fundraisers.

School response:
Since our rookie season in 2007, our team has had about 10-20 members. The majority are freshmen who don't have a reputation/social life/AP classes to worry about. We usually start with 30, but just like in Sparta the build season weeds out the "weak". If you ask any non-robotics student at my school, there is a 98% chance that they not know that there is a robotics club at our school, let alone the purpose of FIRST. Most of the students that attend our fundraisers are either from our team, or college alumni. This is mainly our fault as our team doesn't want to demonstrate at our school assemblies (our robot is so beat up, that our club officers are ashamed to show it off.), and that we don't have a presence at school events (save for the freshmen orientation, the reason for our high ratio of freshmen to upperclassmen).
Some of my teachers show an interest in FIRST(chemistry, math), but we still have to ask them if they could help out.
I don't think our administration knows we exist...yet.

Our companion school (our team consists of two high schools) seems to have the situation the other way around. They have very little workable space, almost a negative financial response from their school, but a great response from their student body.

I wish you luck...and hope to see you compete next year.
Daniel D.
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Unread 30-10-2011, 19:47
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Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?

Our school is home to the world champion TARC rocketry team. They went to Paris France last year and won Worlds for America. Our school gives them 0$.

We are usually fortunate enough to get just the 5000$ entry...But it appears that it may be leaving us in a year or two.

We also had some of our personally raised funds(In a school bank account)...ahem...disappear.

This is sickening to me
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Unread 31-10-2011, 16:54
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Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?

our team doesn't get nearly enough support from our schools, as i see it. they use us at their pride child to show to the public when we do well, but then when they're done using us for their purposes they shove us in a corner and take away our resources to make another successful robot. for this year they quartered our budget to the point that it will only pay for half of a regional, and meanwhile there is a new turf sports stadium worth millions of dollars now next to our school. we also have had our space taken away quite severely, and we can no longer store nearly as many old robots and supplies as we could before. they claim to support us, and they do let us use the facilities, but we have to go through processes to reserve them that we didn't use to have to, and during the summer when preparing for IRI, as well as other times, we were denied use of the gym by the athletic director because we're not a sport, even though it was empty and we were doing no harm. bottom line, although some administrators and teachers seem to take an interest in us, no one takes steps to make sure we can maintain our team from a monetary standpoint...

i've also heard several times "we have a robotics team!?!" and that breaks my heart...i'm personally going out of my way to change that, organizing demos for our robot at all of the schools in the district (there are 11...quite a project and some principals are very unwilling...) and trying to make sure people know we exist and how cool the program really is. i wish we had more support, so i'm taking steps to make it happen. e-mails even got some of our administrators and teachers to come to the Rah Cha Cha Ruckus! we will not be forgotten!
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