Greetings,
The students of FIRST team 1086: Blue Cheese has logged a petition with the President of the United States to help make FIRST teams available to all high school student in the United States. Getting 150 signatures make it public on the “We the People” website. Please take a moment and sign our Petition and share it Social Media
Encourage the federal funding of FIRST robotics programs in every school in the United States.
Encourage the federal funding of FIRST robotics programs in every school in the United States.
FIRST (For Inspiration & Recognition of Science & Technology) inspires students to develop an interest in science, technology, engineering & mathematics careers. Students, ages 6-18, compete with robots of their own creation. FIRST generates excitement for learning while giving students real-life skills such as leadership, communication & gracious professionalism which allow U.S. students to compete in the global market. Many of the teams & schools who would benefit the most from FIRST struggle for funding. FIRST has a proven track record & produces measurable results; to date, more than 300,000 students are involved. We feel that the opportunities FIRST provides should be available for every child in the nation. See www.usfirst.org.
-The Students of FIRST Robotics Team 1086 Blue Cheese
The link is to sign a Whitehouse.gov petition for the funding of FIRST in every school in the United States. Sign if you are interested, every single person helps!
Edit: Sorry for starting a second thread! Thank you for condensing it!
yeah, we didn’t notice the change. The new goal is a bit high. However, if a small fraction of the students who have gone through the program and the adults who have seen the positive affects FIRST has on young people sign this petition, we will get there. Please, Share this link on social Media: Facebook, twitter, Etc.
I am sorry but I don’t see the constitutional mandate for the federal government to fund First Teams. If you started down this road, where would it stop?
funny how folks see that. 10% of all education funding comes from the Federal Government. But that’s another discussion for another day.
The thought process of our team was this: We had millions of people talking about the government funding a Death Star and had the WH reply to that petition. Heck there were blogs saying that it would be a great way to spur economic growth!
Why not use this tool to promote FIRST? It’s far more relevant and just as cool as the Death Star.
This is a terrible idea. (cue angry looks and cries of outrage… read on and then hit the neg rep button) Let’s talk growth -
In the last 2 years JC Penny was heavily involved in funding teams. They gave schools money for the KoP and that’s it. Our growth numbers were great. Lots of rookie teams. Pats on the back for everyone, yay us. The bad thing with all of those teams was that they had money for registration for an event. They didn’t have money for additional parts. They didn’t have mentors. They didn’t have tools. What’s more, FIRST didn’t/doesn’t have the resources they need to train new lead mentors. So we ended up with this group of teams who showed up to their regional with no bumpers, or with their motors wired directly to their battery, or who just never show up because they got discouraged.
Now, a lot of us don’t see why this is bad. But then, you’ve never spent 6 weeks fighting with a system in your teacher’s garage only to never have it work. You’ve never gone to an event and been struggling to move while the uber elite team next to you has this professionally built machine. It’s bloody discouraging. So, what’s the problem? They don’t come back.
Big deal right? They weren’t the type of students we were looking for? Screw that, we just created a whole new group of students and mentors and parents who say “math and science is too hard for me”. Instead of changing the culture we’ve perpetuated it. We’ve moved backwards.
So, how do we solve it? We change our focus, we stop focusing on growth. We need to focus on sustainability. We need to focus on helping teams build sustainable models for funding, for leadership, for recruiting, and for sponsors. I hate seeing rookie teams form and fail in short spans. FIRST is hard. It’s supposed to be. We can’t keep giving people a check and expecting them to succeed. We need to stop this model. It takes a village to raise a child but it takes a community to build a FIRST team.
Hmm, it’s interesting how you assumed that we meant FRC teams. That is not the case. As a FIRST organization that competes in FTC and FRC and mentors and hosts FLL and JrFLL teams, we understand that FRC is not for everyone. Even with very minimal support, teams can be successful in the FIRST community.
This petition is not meant to get that funding. It is a tool to get the conversation started about the importance of STEM in our country’s future.
I could apply the same logic to FTC and FLL as well. In fact, I’ve personally experienced what happens when the talking heads up top dictate that something is going to happen and no one in the trenches has any idea how to implement it (for FRC, FLL, FTC, VEX, and BEST).
However, what about he teams that do have the mentors, but barely have enough money to go to the regional and build a robot. They apply to those grants and sponsorships and often they dont get it. The way I see it it is another way to fundraise and to promote science and technology and FIRST in this country. If this administration wants to help education and increase STEM education in schools, they should consider this petition. It is our responsibily to get 100,000 signers, if every team gets maybe 50 people to sign it we could very well get over that number.
Andrew it is great that JC Penney gives out grants to those teams but FIRST is a learning experiece, most teams do horrible in their rookie season. They return stronger the next season because they know have the experience on how to build a robot in a given time constraint.
Speaking as an adult, I think one of the best things we can do for the next generation is stop borrowing money that they, not we, will have to pay back.
This might be a great thing were there money in hand to pay for it, but there’s not. As with any new spending, every marginal dollar would be borrowed.
If engineers cannot appreciate that there’s no free lunch, who can?
Sorry. The thought is worthy, but the idea is ultimately bad. No support here.
I was the 105th, and you can bet that I’m sharing this around! This would be amazing! A great idea! Hopefully we get this passed!
EDIT:
As for the criticism, I can understand those thoughts, but I think it’s still a great idea to fund education. The government education is underfunded as it is, but that’s another conversation for another day, and not for Chief Delphi. I support the idea despite the criticism.
First off, I like rookies. I like growth. I think that JCP was willing to give out the amount they did is simply phenomenal. I think it was just handled wrong. I think FIRST, JCP, and we as a community ALL share that blame. Predominantly though, I blame us and FIRST. JCP is just another in a long line of companies that throw money at FIRST teams without understanding our problem space. They don’t know crap about us or our community or what it involves. 2 years ago I was on a JCP team, our contact came into the meeting and literally said “holy crap, this is what you guys have to do? How is $6000 helping at all? What more can we do?” And I put my money where my mouth is, last year I was in contact with many of the rookies in Tampa Bay. I took numerous hours off work to meet with their mentors and ask them what they needed. And universally they all told me that they had no idea what they had gotten themselves into. I could continue these stories for FTC, FLL, Vex, and BEST too.
If you want to help fix some of this problem… document EVERYTHING. Show how much it costs. Show how hard you work. Show the hours you put in. Show the partnerships you have had to form. And if you don’t know how? ASK. Then get out in your community, work with your RDs and your Senior Mentors. If you want to spread FIRST spread the wealth of knowledge NOT just money. Maybe instead of focusing on getting the White House to fund teams we should get them to bring HoF teams back in. Maybe we should have them bring in WFA winners for debates on STEM education policy.
And I fear that any federal funding would exacerbate this problem to the point of over-saturation of teams. FIRST is a plant, a living organism. What happens if you water a plant too much? We need to grow smart not grow fast.
Not a bad idea, but such a petition might be better served targeting something like “co-curricular STEM activities” with a nice overview explanation, as opposed to targeting a single entity (non-profit or program) no matter how cool it may be.
I hope you’re not trying to softball in a political argument here. Either indirectly through government contracts or right from federal agencies, FIRST thrives because it is already backed by the government at its center. BAE, BAH, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Harris, General Dynamics, Halliburton, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Honeywell, L3 Communications, MIT, Motorola, Verizon, Raytheon, Siemens, Rockwell Collins, Texas Instruments, Northrop Grumman, Rolls Royce, Mitsubishi, and more are all on two lists: the top 100 defense contractors in the United States, whose contracts total in the range of 6 to 7 million USD per day, and the top 100 FIRST contributors, who are title sponsors of events, provide grants and mentors to teams, and are major integral sponsors to some of the powerhouse teams. FIRST would not exist at all without some of these, and would not be the power it is now if not for defense contract money that eventually trickles down a tiny bit to teams. The third largest industry in the United States also employs a majority of FRC mentors, regional committee members, and global board members, and also takes a major part in the second largest portion of our federal budget->deficit->debt. It’s a slippery slope I’m not going to comment on, so I would avoid it here.
I will not avoid saying that I look forward to the inevitable, creative rejection letter that will be received if this petition earns enough signatures to merit a response, like most other wh.gov petitions have earned. /s
This whole thread is a political discussion. If a petition to government action ain’t political, nothing is. If CD has a policy against such, it should go bye-bye.