Since its founding several years ago, our school’s robotics team has participated in many regionals, and attended nationals once. Like with any other team, our alumni have found the experience to be highly worthwhile, and we have received some attention from local newspapers and such.
Recently, however, some of the robotics leadership got into some non-robotics related trouble, and as a result, the school administration has lost its faith in both the leadership and the club as a whole. As such, it looks like the school is pulling the plug on our robotics program after this competition season. Many, if not all, of the students on the team are still in avid support of our robotics team, and do not want to forever lose this opportunity to participate in an organization such as FIRST. We are now starting to consider our only remaining option of removing any affiliation that we have with our school, and becoming completely independent of it. We understand that it will be difficult to fund raise, find a location to work in, and attract membership, but it doesn’t seem as if we have much of a choice.
Seeing that this is a very controversial issue, we were wondering about the opinions of the rest of the FIRST community about this situation.
Its an unfortunate situation. I would like to point out that since the robotics leadership does not represent your entire team, try and make your school admins see how worthwhile the FIRST program is to students and the school as a whole.
I would recommend making an appointment for a presentation with the school adminitration. Get the entire team to present their case, make sure the school can truly see your passion for FIRST, add videos of regionals and such. Get your teacher and mentors and alumni involved.
Team RUSH had a similar problem 2 years ago. Our administration was closing our school (a combination of students from various high schools in different districts) and decided that they did not want to support us. OSMTech (the school) lobbied and all seemed hopeless. Yet through our hard work, and determination we proved that we deserved the right to remain a team. OSMTech was adopted by one of it’s feeder high schools, and our team is no even more fortified.
Honestly, team RUSH has made me believe that if you keep working at something and put your time and energy into proving that you FIRST needs to be in your life SOMEONE will save your team, be it who you think or not.
This saddens me greatly to hear, and I would hope that if you are not able to save the relationship with the school then you are able to keep your team.
Definitely work with the administration. If it helps you, kick the troublemakers off the team.
By the way, I would suggest that future questions of this sort be placed in the FAHA Mailbox subforum. It was created for controversial issues so you don’t have to make an anonymous account.
We had similar problems in our old team 1083. Eventually the school shut it down.
Several from that team formed 1902 Exploding Bacon under 4H and it has been a wonderful experience. 4H has been very supportive. Now we have several schools with our team not just one school. eventually that school sent students with us.
I would try first to get the school back on if not then try to reorganize under something like 4H. Donations and insurance flow through them and they take nothing out except student dues which is small.
Whatever path you take, make sure your attitude toward the school is positive. If you are viewed as going around behind the administration’s back, they may just come back next year and tell you that you won’t be allowed to miss school for competitions.
Try to not have them cut the program, get some facts from the FIRST website and like others said have show a presentation and/or tell why FIRST is a good program and not cut it. Maybe get past members and tell the admin about thier experiances and how it helped them in life if it did.
Maybe if you want to get a little meaner if the sports teams or other clubs have problems, like hockey players get into fight often, and ask why the school hasn’t cut those programs.
It is hard to know what to say not knowing the actions of the leaders but I understand keeping that confidential. Tell admin to kick off the members from the team and that they can’t rejoin if it was only one or two of the members
are first 2 years we were not a school team but then the school got angry at us for using there metal shop so we became a school team. at first we had alot of people on the board against us but we got the word out what we did and now we have to superintendent supporting us as well as the principal and VP…
Try to talk to the school board and show them what you do and why it is important to keep the team around…
You can choose to let the administration clean up the mess or the team can choose to clean up the mess. If left to the administration there could likely be a shutdown.
If the team chooses to clean up the mess then I would suggest a plan of action created by the students and mentors and presented to the administration demonstrating how the team will recover from this.
Without knowing the direct facts, a part of this plan will have to directly speak to how the ‘offenders’ will be addressed. these folks could resign, or be fired to put it plainly.
If the team wants to be treated with respect then the team will have to demonstrate how to contain and discharge this damage and put it on a self correcting path to regaining the confidence of the administration.
This happens all the times with adults. You have heard it said all the time that FIRST reflects real live. This is real. Something broke, gotta fix it.
I just noticed that the title of the thread was “school administration troubles” which should be re-titled “team leadership troubles”
Honest self assessment is a real virtue in a situation like this. good luck.
I feel your pain. I guess you have to bite the bullet and try to explain yourself in a calm manner. Administrations won’t listen to you if you are angry at them, trust me. From what I’ve seen this year in FIRST, I think FIRST is something your administration does not want to eradicate. Just remind them that
Good Luck!
To slightly elaborate on the wrongdoings of some of the leaders, it mostly involved two students and mal-use of computers at school. The first of the students attempted to steal private data from a robotics computer, and was “caught” by the second student, who reported to the rest of the robotics leadership. The incident quickly escalated to the school administration, and some prior computer history of the second student was uncovered, which had nothing whatsoever to do with robotics. Although both suffered identical punisments from the school, including being kicked from the team, members of the team were in support of the second student, as he didn’t do anything wrong regarding robotics, and indeed pointed out the wrongdoings of the first student to robotics. More recently, the second student was there when the team was practicing in a different location on campus, and was reported by a teacher, which reduced credibility even further.
Also, the general trend among replies seems to be that we should continue trying to negociate with the school in one way or another. If this does not work out, however, how feasable would it be for us to run independent of the school, from some other location?
It seems like our district administration hates us. The school level staff likes us, but it is the governing board that seems to write all rules that make it impossible to do something as simple as purchase tools or build a website (please don’t ask). That is why I am inviting them all to the regional this year. The advice so far is the best, put on a good presentation, get other area teams to testify with a good letter, get mentors involved. In the short term I would highly recommend adult leadership of the team.
If that doesn’t end up working out, quite a few teams work away from school at another location. It WILL take lots of work, but with enough searching and asking, there is a sponsor out there (different schools/districts included) that will give you space to work and store materials. You will want to find somewhere for dedicated, long-term storage of materials somewhere.
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You need to show them how important this program is and what it means for students. If you are attending a regional in your area, invite them and the school board to attend. Get them team Tshirts and get them into the stands to watch and cheer. Let them walk around like a team member and see the effect it would have on other students. A few bad apples in a single year do not represent the entire program.
If any administrator would like to discuss this, have them PM me and we can exchange email addresses or phone numbers. If you are close or attending either the Midwest, Boilermaker or the Minnesota regional, have them come and meet me in the pits and I will try and show them the effects and relate to them how much this program means. Yes every team will have someone who gets out of line, even us. I can tell you that one of those people reversed his ways, accepted the imposed 1 year removal from the team but came back with a vow to be the best he could be. He proved it and became driver that last year as well as a model mechanical pit crew member.
I believe FIRST puts more students on the road to college and further success than any other program currently in schools. You can’t fight that kind of success.
Right now 99% of the focus should be working to fix the problem. The administration and the teams should not be inclined to “give up so easily” at this point. Giving up, by either the team or admin, is the easy way out of the problem. Problems are not solved by ignoring them but facing the squarely and head on.
It may be useful to have a ‘distinguished outside panel’ to help review and repair the problem. Possibly a small collection of respected adults that are active in the business community and education might work. You see this in many things. For example when the Challenger space shuttle was lost there was a commission to review it.
The ability of your team to navigate through this crisis potentially will have a big future impact. Please look at this as an opportunity for your team to demonstrate to the school and and business community to face and overcome a tough issue.
If done well the team could earn a new level of support in the community that surpasses the previous history.
Food for thought.
PS. when presenting, take the ‘long view’.
It is about a lot more than our team today, but about the future path of education and its economic impact in that area.
Does the public shut down a whole school because of one misguided student ? Of course not !!
Do you deny educational and inspirational opportunity to a generally well motivated group of students because of the misdeeds of one student. Ridiculous !!
Okay, so go make a speech worthy of “Mr. Smith goes to Washington” !!
Your team could draft a student/parent participation agreement form which would include the appropriate conduct expectations.
If you PM me, I’ll send you a copy of ours. (I know I owe someone else a copy but my brain has become a haze.)
The agreement form will show that your team is serious and will work to comply with the strict standards set regarding cheating and misconduct.
Work to prepare your elevator speech as well, so that each of you are prepared to advance the importance of the team to the members, the school, and the community.
Edit:
This is also a lesson for each of us to pay attention to. One person can make a difference, whether it be positive or negative. One person is capable of jeopardizing a team’s integrity and impact. One person can also work to restore it.
Doesn’t matter. The second student violated school rules, and was punished as a result.
More recently, the second student was there when the team was practicing in a different location on campus, and was reported by a teacher, which reduced credibility even further.
And now you’re getting the team in deeper and deeper. The team has defined itself as a rogue organization in the minds of the administrators - they don’t accept the rulings on punishment for member’s misdeeds. The second student was expelled from participating - why did the team let him be there?
Also, the general trend among replies seems to be that we should continue trying to negociate with the school in one way or another. If this does not work out, however, how feasable would it be for us to run independent of the school, from some other location?
You do need to continue to try to work with the school. Whether that means continuing as a school-sponsored activity or not, you still have to have a working relationship. You’ve gotten that rogue reputation, and that will be hard to overcome. If you split off on your own, you can expect very little cooperation between the team and the school. Would you have a place to meet? Would your sponsor(s) continue to support the team? - some give support to teams because they are supporting a school group. Would any teachers that you have as team mentors continue on? These kinds of questions all have to be answered before you make a decision to go independent.
