Philly’s student robotics scene is running on empty

Four years ago, the Philly robotics community celebrated an influx of funding to support youth programming. Now, student teams are struggling to find funds to keep competing. 

Since the end of a three-year contract between the Philadelphia Robotics Coalition (PRC) and the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) last summer, the inconsistent nature of funding for school robotics in the city means there are fewer opportunities for students to gain valuable skills outside the classroom, educators told Technical.ly. 

For a city that recently boasted an international champion in youth robotics — Central High School’s RoboLancers — the loss is widely felt. 

“My kids are coming into the competitions with less equal footing than what they were doing before,” said Anne-Claire Merkle-Scotland, robotics coach at Andrew J. Morrison School. 

Her team only attended one regional competition this year, where it competed against schools from outside the city. It was obvious that those students had more time and resources, which discouraged her students, who don’t have the same opportunities, she said. 

“It was all Philadelphia kids,” Merkle-Scotland said of the PRC-hosted competitions they used to attend. “The judges were more aware of what the kids’ experience levels were.” 

PRC only hosted one event this past school year, its first Innovation Project and Festival Academy, in March. Local teams and teachers have kept robotics alive through grassroots support. Without a sustainable funding source, though, the programming remains inconsistent. 

“[The students] care about what they’re doing,” said Savvy Gurule, coach of the robotics team at Science Leadership Academy (SLA) at Beeber. “More people need to understand that funding and time and money for things like this for these kids is so important.” 

Grants and community partners fill gaps, not the void

As the future of funding from the school district remains unclear, PRC is focusing its energy on grant opportunities and partnerships to get by.  

From 2021 to 2024, PRC had a contract with the School District of Philadelphia funded through a portion of the $1.1 billion that the school district received from the American Rescue Plan Act. That contract expired last summer, leading the org to stop hosting events and cut support for high school robotics teams, focusing instead on kindergarten through eighth grade. 

Now, PRC is cobbling together funds from different grant programs. Specifically, the nonprofit received an $11,000 grant to help schools continue their teams this year, according to Dia Jones, executive director of PRC. The nonprofit has also formed partnerships and received grants from multiple charitable foundations and a Department of Defense STEM education program. This money goes towards operations, materials and training.

One specific concern educators had last summer was a lack of funds to pay teachers for their time; however, the school district secured a grant to pay robotics coaches in January, according to Jones. The School District of Philadelphia did not respond to Technical.ly’s request for comment.

“We were able to get enough of the grants to stay afloat, to make sure that we were able to support the elementary and middle schools that wanted to come through,” Jones said.

This year, PRC supported about 75 teams in 50 middle and elementary schools across public schools in Philadelphia, she said.

Philly’s youth robotics footprint is shrinking

Over the last few years, the number of robotics teams in the school district has been declining, with its lowest team count this past school year.

When PRC was officially incorporated in 2018, 77 teams were competing in FIRST Robotics, a national org that designs robotics challenges and competitions, in Philly public schools. Team numbers peaked during the 2022 to 2023 school year at 131, but have since declined to 103 last year and just 73 this year, RoboLancers head coach Michael Johnson told Technical.ly.

“It’s been a year of reassessing what partnerships are available, what resources are available, and getting stuff figured out,” he said. 

PRC initially focused on getting more schools to start FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC), a mid-level robotics program, Johnson said. 

Now, there is a push to recruit more FIRST Robotics Competition teams, FTC’s more advanced counterpart for high schoolers. Even though FRC is more expensive, Johnson found it attracts more financial and mentoring support. For example, Bodine High School for International Affairs’ team is only two years old, but secured Amazon as a sponsor. 

“It requires more skill and know-how, but it also attracts much more support,” Johnson said. “Both in terms of outside money and mentors. By being bigger and more exciting, you draw more attention and that support comes.” 

Where schools fall short, the community steps in

While PRC and RoboLancers are focused on robotics teams within the school district, external partners are also providing robotics programming to youth. 

PRC wants to develop partnerships with the library system, Police Athletic League and Boys and Girls Clubs, Jones said. 

“Our goal is to have robotics in every neighborhood, and that’s going to come through with the conversations,” she said. “So if there are not robotics programs in schools, there can be robotics programs in the neighborhood.”

Other orgs like the Caring People Alliance (CPA) have already been hosting robotics programming outside of school for years. 

The CPA hosts after-school programming through three Boys and Girls Clubs across Philly. The org participates in the SeaPerch Challenge, an underwater robotics challenge sponsored by the US Navy and Office of Naval Research. 

Jessica Bachrach, STEM coordinator for CPA, has coached the team for the past decade. This year, her students even qualified to attend SeaPerch’s international challenge. 

“For the most part, the kids are not coming to Caring People Alliance for robotics,” she said. “They were coming here and maybe heard about it and thought that it was cool … that’s a way to reach more kids that might not have thought that they’d be into it.” 

CPA’s program is only possible because of a consistent funder, Bachrach said. The org is partnered with Temple University, which hosts SeaPerch’s Philly regional competition and provides materials and mentorship support, she said. 

“I don’t have my own budget. I do a lot of science with whatever materials I can find,” Bachrach said. “We’re very lucky with this partnership that they’ve been able to provide the supplies that we need.” 

No funding, no future

For most robotics teams, funding is inconsistent and leaders need to always be thinking about potential sponsors, according to Frank Farrell, executive director of FIRST Mid-Atlantic, an implementation org for FIRST’s programs in parts of New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware that helps schools find money and partnerships for these types of programs.

A lot of teams have a “guardian angel” to support them, but losing that sponsor can put a team at risk of shutting down, Farrell said. One of these guardian angels, Drexel University, funded Gurule’s team from SLA Beeber last year because she was still a student teacher at the time, she said. This year, an unnamed private donor funded the program, she said. 

Usually, it takes two years to convince a school district to shift money to a new activity, Farrell said. FIRST Mid-Atlantic is in conversation with city government and state representatives to get more money allocated.

“The opportunities are in the conversation,” he said. “The challenges are in the distribution of funds and making sure that they really do get to the teams that need them.”

The elementary school teams compete in the FIRST Lego League, which typically costs between $600 and $1,000. But for high school teams competing in FIRST Robotics Competition, the costs can range from $15,000 to $100,000, Farrell said. 

Philly teams usually only have a fraction of the funds required.

Merkle-Scotland’s team from Andrew J. Morrison School couldn’t afford the $200 cost to buy a more advanced robot kit, but PRC provided one for them so they could compete this year, she said. PRC also covered the entrance fee for Merkle-Scotland’s team to attend a competition, but in the past, it also would have covered transportation and food, she said. This year, she had to figure those things out herself.

“It’s really going to come to a commitment of all the vested partners in Philadelphia to say, no, this is what we need to do in order to be effective,” Farrell said. “We need to transform how we’re funding STEM education.”