Foshay Learning Center is an public inner-city school located in "the hood" of Los Angeles, California. We are a k-12 span school with approximate 4000 kids. The school is so overcrowded, that the excess kids (about 500) have to be bused to other schools and about 1/5 of the teaching staff are required to travel from classroom to classroom every period. We are a Title One School-about 97% of our students are eligible for the federal free lunch program. Many of our students are from disadvantage backgrounds(immigrants, have to deal with gangs and gang violence on a daily basis, high dropout rates, drugs, single family parents, foster home kids-you get the picture). The former Principal of our school had a vision-he believed "All kids can learn" regardless of color or economic background. So in 1996, our school started a "Technology Academy". in which our 10th, 11th and 12th graders could learn some basic computer skills such how to hook up monitors, CPUs, printers, and the internet. Later, our tech teacher started teaching an internet research class, and a basic website class using html coding. Still, this was not enough to motivate and challenge our kids. We got our tech kids internships at a couple of computer companies. Unfortunately, although our kids were happy to have a paid internship at these companies, they were relegated to filing papers or making copies throughout their 8-week internship and rarely had any contact with technology such as programming, I. T. and networking.

Foshay Learning Center Team 597 was honored by the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of
Education for it achievements and provided information to School Board members and the public on
the importance of maintaining and supporting robotics at the secondary school level.

We've established a strong partnership with the University of Southern California. Dr. Larry Lim, the MEP(Minority Engineering Program) and MESA(Math, Science, Engineering Achievement) Director, has been a very strong supporter and advocate of ensuring our Latino and African American students get exposure to the fields of math, science and engineering. He provides us with a machinist and access to a machine shop. He helps us set up field trips. He requires all students in MESA to participate in math, science and engineering challenges.

High percentage of our FIRST students are studying math, science and engineering at the United States Naval Academy, USC, UCLA, Boston University, Smith College, University of Colorado, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Cal State Long Beach, UC Santa Cruz, and several Junior Colleges.