FIRST in Your School District

[falconmaster]

Originally Posted by David Noll

My school does the same thing but don't let them. Our school wont let us edit our website, doesn't support the program, and every time something goes wrong in the computer system we get called to the office and blamed for that mess.
At the same time, through the efforts of the students and our mentors (mostly them), have gotten 2 FRC teams at our highschool, 2 FTC teams (one in highschool, one in middle school), 4 FLL teams in our middle schools and a budding JFLL (elementary school) program that has one team to date and should be growing to 5 next year.
We have found that this is a great way of getting members for the FRC teams, if the kids start doing FIRST when they are 6 by the time they are 16 it won't be a question as to what they are doing on the first weekend of January, kick-off. It's just like cigarette companies, hook 'em while their young...

Go to the school board and get support from the top down. Invite the board members to your school, let them drive the bot, make sure the Newspaper is there. More exposure causes political types to want to do the right thing, especially if they don't have to do that much to make it happen. They love to let you make them look good. Try it!

[falconmaster]

Is there any Major metropolitan city that has their whole school district at the FRC level involved with FIRST? Our city is Phoenix an I think we are the 6th largest city in the US. I could be wrong. Just trying to see the FIRST proliferation going on here.

[falconmaster]

Originally Posted by Cactus_Robotics

Its really horrible that our school and school district doesnt support our team.. I guess thats how it is when the school puts all effort and money into is sports. Its good to see some support from a school district in Arizona. Good Job.

Do you want us to help you start a campaign to get more schools in your district on board. We can make a presentation or help you make a presentation to you school board or other schools in your district? Our goal is to make it embarrassing in Arizona to be a high school and not have a robotics team. We can't do it alone though, we need as many teams out there as possible to join in the cause! The worst they can say is no and then what have you lost?

[Cactus_Robotics]

Originally Posted by falconmaster

Do you want us to help you start a campaign to get more schools in your district on board. We can make a presentation or help you make a presentation to you school board or other schools in your district? Our goal is to make it embarrassing in Arizona to be a high school and not have a robotics team. We can't do it alone though, we need as many teams out there as possible to join in the cause! The worst they can say is no and then what have you lost?

Another problem we have is we've tried to go around to other schools started one at Ironwood team 898 a few years ago but the team fell apart because of lack of student interest and the teacher who was doing it would control all of the decisions, he didnt quite get what FIRST was about. The other schools have no teacher that wanna step up.

[falconmaster]

All you need is to find one crazy teacher!

[Mr. Lim]

Fredi,

I believe (but don't quote me) the single school board with the highest participation is the Toronto District School Board with 21 schools:

2505 Don Mills Collegiate Institute / St. Andrew's Junior High School
1246 Agincourt CI
188 Woburn Collegiate Institute
865 Western Technical-Commercial School
1814 Northview Heights SS
1815 Sir John A Macdonald CI
1310 Runnymede CI
1835 RH King Academy
854 Martingrove C. I.
1404 Dr Norman Bethune CI
907 East York Collegiate Institute
1514 West Humber CI
919 Harbord CI
2670 York Memorial Collegiate High School
2076 Thistletown Collegiate Institute
1558 Albert Campbell CI
1564 A.Y. Jackson SS
2185 Etobicoke Collegiate Institute
1605 George Harvey CI
2198 L'Amoreaux C.I
1219 Emery Collegiate Institute

The high participation is largely due to a funding formula that was developed and championed by Mark Breadner, former Computer Science teacher at Woburn CI, former Regional Director of the Canadian Regional, GTR WFFA 2007, and now a vice-principal in the TDSB.

The TDSB has a funding incentive program that makes starting a team a much smaller barrier. The justification at the school board level isn't too tricky: for the fraction of what it costs the board to fund a football team, schools can have a robotics team, where kids can learn career relevant skills, ALONG with a lot of the same competitive character building traits that conventional sports offered.

The side effect is that robotics teams now outnumber football teams in the TDSB, I believe.

As an aside, the TDSB includes only PUBLIC schools in the actual city of Toronto (no suburbs). There are many more Catholic school teams and private school teams, as well surrounding Greater Toronto Area teams.

Overall, we are seeing a stronger trend of school boards jumping on board the funding wagon, which I believe is a good thing. Corporate sponsorship will always be (and should be) the primary driving force behind FRC, but school board financial support should never be discounted. If they're already willing to support sports teams, then why not FIRST?

[David Noll]

Low and behold Canada funds science and technology, as well as academic progress, above sports. Be patient with us guys, our bureaucrats will figure it out in a decade or so. But definitely start at the top to try and get support. My team is 8 years old (if I'm wrong Hobin, shush) and we kept trying to work our way up, I recently found out the superintendent seriously enjoys and supports the program. Guess who we are going to meet with after Atlanta?
Moreover, if you don't have a big muckitty-muck that supports FIRST then go to the BOE, parents and teachers that care about education will complain FOR you until someone up above writes a check or comes to take a look. Every year Dean tells us to spread the message through media and politicians, but why don't we spread the idea through education? We educate kids on how to live and make good decisions, I kind of think that this program is a good decision.

[falconmaster]

Originally Posted by SlimBoJones

Fredi,

I believe (but don't quote me) the single school board with the highest participation is the Toronto District School Board with 21 schools:

2505 Don Mills Collegiate Institute / St. Andrew's Junior High School
1246 Agincourt CI
188 Woburn Collegiate Institute
865 Western Technical-Commercial School
1814 Northview Heights SS
1815 Sir John A Macdonald CI
1310 Runnymede CI
1835 RH King Academy
854 Martingrove C. I.
1404 Dr Norman Bethune CI
907 East York Collegiate Institute
1514 West Humber CI
919 Harbord CI
2670 York Memorial Collegiate High School
2076 Thistletown Collegiate Institute
1558 Albert Campbell CI
1564 A.Y. Jackson SS
2185 Etobicoke Collegiate Institute
1605 George Harvey CI
2198 L'Amoreaux C.I
1219 Emery Collegiate Institute

The high participation is largely due to a funding formula that was developed and championed by Mark Breadner, former Computer Science teacher at Woburn CI, former Regional Director of the Canadian Regional, GTR WFFA 2007, and now a vice-principal in the TDSB.

The TDSB has a funding incentive program that makes starting a team a much smaller barrier. The justification at the school board level isn't too tricky: for the fraction of what it costs the board to fund a football team, schools can have a robotics team, where kids can learn career relevant skills, ALONG with a lot of the same competitive character building traits that conventional sports offered.

The side effect is that robotics teams now outnumber football teams in the TDSB, I believe.

As an aside, the TDSB includes only PUBLIC schools in the actual city of Toronto (no suburbs). There are many more Catholic school teams and private school teams, as well surrounding Greater Toronto Area teams.

Overall, we are seeing a stronger trend of school boards jumping on board the funding wagon, which I believe is a good thing. Corporate sponsorship will always be (and should be) the primary driving force behind FRC, but school board financial support should never be discounted. If they're already willing to support sports teams, then why not FIRST?

Fantastic!! Hope we get there soon!!

[Vince lau]

Originally Posted by SlimBoJones

Fredi,

I believe (but don't quote me) the single school board with the highest participation is the Toronto District School Board with 21 schools:

2505 Don Mills Collegiate Institute / St. Andrew's Junior High School
1246 Agincourt CI
188 Woburn Collegiate Institute
865 Western Technical-Commercial School
1814 Northview Heights SS
1815 Sir John A Macdonald CI
1310 Runnymede CI
1835 RH King Academy
854 Martingrove C. I.
1404 Dr Norman Bethune CI
907 East York Collegiate Institute
1514 West Humber CI
919 Harbord CI
2670 York Memorial Collegiate High School
2076 Thistletown Collegiate Institute
1558 Albert Campbell CI
1564 A.Y. Jackson SS
2185 Etobicoke Collegiate Institute
1605 George Harvey CI
2198 L'Amoreaux C.I
1219 Emery Collegiate Institute

The high participation is largely due to a funding formula that was developed and championed by Mark Breadner, former Computer Science teacher at Woburn CI, former Regional Director of the Canadian Regional, GTR WFFA 2007, and now a vice-principal in the TDSB.

The TDSB has a funding incentive program that makes starting a team a much smaller barrier. The justification at the school board level isn't too tricky: for the fraction of what it costs the board to fund a football team, schools can have a robotics team, where kids can learn career relevant skills, ALONG with a lot of the same competitive character building traits that conventional sports offered.

The side effect is that robotics teams now outnumber football teams in the TDSB, I believe.

As an aside, the TDSB includes only PUBLIC schools in the actual city of Toronto (no suburbs). There are many more Catholic school teams and private school teams, as well surrounding Greater Toronto Area teams.

Overall, we are seeing a stronger trend of school boards jumping on board the funding wagon, which I believe is a good thing. Corporate sponsorship will always be (and should be) the primary driving force behind FRC, but school board financial support should never be discounted. If they're already willing to support sports teams, then why not FIRST?

now to try and get the York Region District school board to do the same thing

We're thinking about starting robotics teams at some schools in our district in the coming months. Any ideas as to what to do? Who to talk to at the school, how to persuade them, etc.?

Thanks!

[Cactus_Robotics]

Originally Posted by falconmaster

All you need is to find one crazy teacher!

Agreed.

[pfreivald]

Originally Posted by robonerd_842

Hello teams!!!
I was just wondering if any school district is totally involved in FIRST?
How many schools does your district have involved in FIRST?
And what does your team plan to do to get your entire school district involved in FIRST?

If you all could just let me know I would be grateful! Thanks!
Have a great week!!!

We have one k-12 school in our district; it's involved!

[mathking]

The Dublin City School District (Dublin, OH and also serving parts of NW Columbus and two surrounding counties) has one FRC team (1014) for its three high schools. We have between 22 and 30 FLL teams each year, representing students from the 4 middle schools and 12 elementary schools. (Though the FLL teams are not all made of exclusively students from one school). The variation depends on interest. I believe there were 26 teams this year.

[dag0620]

Wolcott is a smaller town, with only one high school, one middle school, and 3 elementary schools. With that said we are very fortunate to have FIRST in every school.

Our High School has my FRC Team: MAX1071. This also in addition to being the team for Wolcott High School, we also take any students from surrounding schools who do not have a team available to them.

Our Middle School has an FLL team, the Nitrobots.

We currently have 6 Jr. FLL teams in town, with 4 being directly in each school of our 3 schools , and 2 additional ones that meet at our HS that pull kids from the entire district.

All of our FIRST programs fall under our FRC team, as it is out responsibility to operate these programs.

I'd also add we're very fortunate to also hold 3 different FIRST events during the year in our district. In the fall we hold an Fll qualifier, in the winter a Jr. FLL Festival, and in the spring an FRC Off-Season event.

[1986titans]

The Lee's Summit School District has supported FIRST very well, despite funding cutbacks for nearly everyone in the district. The district has:

Three FRC Teams for three high schools:

• 1730 - Team Driven - Lee's Summit High School
• 1986 - Team Titanium - Lee's Summit West High School
• 1987 - Broncobots - Lee's Summit North High School

2 out of 3 middle schools have FLL teams (and one has two teams).

Technically, only one out of 18 elementary schools in the district participate in FLL according to the region's list (and that school has two teams), but the gifted program in every school builds for whatever the FLL challenge is and there's a scrimmage amongst those teams.