New Haven Independent

The more than two-hour workshop Thursday was organized at Co-op High School by ecology teacher Christin Arnini and Connecticut Sierra Club political chair Martin Mador. Thirty students from Co-op and Common Ground High School gathered in the Co-op library on Bradley Street to learn the nuts and bolts of how bills are introduced and how they become law — or maybe go down in flames. They heard about the importance of the “C” word - constituent - when students contact legislators.

“Tell them you live in their district, and your parents are voters,” Mador advised.

Mador (pictured with Arnini) brought up the General Assembly website on a big screen and explained how they can find their legislators and how they can track votes on bills. He ran down the GA’s 22 committees where bills originate and which are the first to hear public testimony on them. Click here to see the handouts.

Believe it or not, the students stayed engaged through this whole process, one that would drive many an adult to the nearest watering hole.

Then it was time for them to break up in small groups and actually plan a strategy for how to make an impact on the process. Of the 17 subject areas where Mador outlined bills currently before the legislature, they picked six to focus on, including the three mentioned at the top of the story, as well as environmental justice, the right to dry clothes on a clothesline (to save energy, but restricted by many condo associations) and healthy schools.

Heather Franci (pictured), a Co-op junior and West Haven resident, participated with Arnini in a political training offered by the Connecticut Sierra Club last December. “I think what most got me interested,” Franci said, “was they were talking about normal citizens giving them [legislators] house calls and going up to them in the street and saying, ‘This is a problem and something should be done about it.’ And people like us — even students- - just saying, ‘There’s an issue’ and getting that to the legislature, I just found that to be fascinating.”

Regina Clarke, a manager of custodial services for the New Haven schools, said, “I’m just here to give them some pointers on how to get a recycling program started,” she said, “being that the board hasn’t issued an official protocol as to what we need to do or how they want it done. They want to get it started before the bill is enacted to help make it happen.”

Mador recruited several adults to help lead small groups, including (left to right) New Haven State Rep. Robert Megna and John Calandrelli, program director for the Connecticut chapter of the Sierra Club. As Megna prepared to discuss the two environmental justice bills before the General Assembly with a small group of students, he said, “I love doing it because the more you can rally students and get them involved in the process, the better the process is.” When he was asked which was the most effective way to contact him - email, letter, or phone call — he said a phone call or an email asking him to contact them.

The biggest group of students gathered to brainstorm ways to push passage of a bill to expand Connecticut’s bottle bill — one of the first in the nation when it went into effect around 1979 - to require a five cent deposit on single-serve water bottles. They’re a big part of today’s waste stream and didn’t exist in the 1970s. Click here to listen to the closing statement the students drew up to send to legislators.

Students stayed engaged throughout the whole process, but — as with high school students everywhere — when the final bell rang out the end of the school day, they were out of there.

Teacher Arnini was pleased with how the day turned out. She met Mador at the legislative training day, and said she wished he could do a similar presentation for high school students. A few months later, here it was.

“I think of this as a pilot,” Arnini said, “because this would be a nice annual event.” And in the future, she’d like to hold it earlier in the year so the students could actually go to the capital to testfiy on relevant bills. “My environmental studies class has been trying to figure out what can we do with this information we learn all year, how can we act on it? So this is an event where you can see that your voice can matter.”

Mador seconded that, and thirded it, reminding the students that they can make a difference.