The end of the Stop Shop

People often ask how did Stockbridge get started in robotics.  They are usually asking about the underwater robotics program which is a great story in an of itself. But, it really started with the demise of the Stop Shop.  The Stop Shop was the schools store, run by the marketing class, as part of our marketing curriculum.  The Stop Shop was run by the advanced marketing class at Stockbridge High School since the mid-1970s and was a favorite of the students.

The Stop Shop sold pop, candy, school supplies and school spirit items and was a consistent money maker for the young marketers and would be entrepreneurs of Stockbridge.  While a student favorite, the Stop Shop was not necessarily a favorite of the school board or the schools food service contractors.
In late 2005 the school district made the decision to eliminate the Stop Shop for several reasons.  Recent changes in the law questioned the selling of pop and candy in the school and the company that was running the school's food service operations insisted that the Stop Shop was taking sales revenue away from their operations causing them to run in the red.  The quick and simple fix was to eliminate the Stop Shop.

Rather than fight the inevitable, I agreed to drop the Stop Shop from the following year's course offerings.  I also asked that the profits the Stop Shop accumulated that school year be reinvested into robotics kits.  The next year we would offer robotics as an elective as opposed to offering the Stop Shop/Advanced Marketing.  So, we took the $10,000 in the Stop Shop account and purchased 10 Vex robotics kits and started a robotics class.

The robotics class was a success and we continued to add students to the program over the next several years.  In 2009 we offered an advanced robotics class that competed in ROBOFEST and the year after we began to add underwater robots or ROVs.