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The Bill

The Robotics Funding Initiative has a humble, but charitable goal. The program will provide 12 different school districts, which are lacking the funding or means to have a robotics team, the opportunity to teach their students STEM. It will provide underprivileged children the ability to learn STEM in an interactive and entertaining manner, while also providing a strong foundation for future careers in STEM.

In comparison to the 57% of public high schools in Michigan that have an FRC team, only 29% of NJ high schools have an FRC team. Michigan has achieved this feat as a result of their state-funded program.To combat this disparity, we spearheaded the NJ Robotics Funding Bill, a grassroots movement aimed at passing new legislation to fund FIRST teams in NJ. In 2019, we advocated to the Robbinsville Town Council to pass a Joint Legislative Resolution urging the assembly to support our cause. Assemblyman Daniel Benson enthusiastically agreed and introduced our bill, A2455, into the NJ Assembly on February 3rd, 2020.

The bill creates a 3-year pilot program in the Department of Education that will provide grant funding to 12 low-income school districts to start robotics teams. Recognizing that this initiative is much bigger than any one team, we partnered with FMA and 10 other FIRST teams in NJ to advocate for this bill. On Feb 22, 2021, Herb Katz, the Development Director of FMA, and students from 3 separate FRC teams (2590, 203, 223) testified virtually in support of bill A2455 in front of the Science, Innovation and Technology committee. Seven members of our team gave written testimony in support of the bill. A member of our FTC team also testified in-person in front of the New Jersey State Senate Education Committee. The bill was signed into law by Governor Phil Murphy on December 21st, 2021. Currently, we are working with the government, Assemblyman Benson, to secure funding for the bill. We plan to partner with the 10 teams that helped us pass the bill to secure continuous funding for the grants.

The Law

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