We were in a huge room debating about laws speaking into microphones that made us sound like giants. You might be wondering, “Where is this?” This was the board of legislators field trip! If you thought that would be fun there is a bit more coming such as meeting the district 5 legislator Ben Boykin and being in the committee room.

The Board of Legislators trip had many fun activities and here are my top three personal favorites. The first thing we did was discuss whether schools should ban unhealthy foods from vending machines. Oh, I forgot to tell you that this was a mock meeting which means we weren’t actually discussing if it would be a law or not. My class’s main answer was no meaning that if the meeting was real, unhealthy foods would not be banned. The second was meeting district five’s legislator, Ben Boykin because he was really nice and told us a lot of cool things. Lastly number three was the committee. The committee was pretty much the same as my first favorite but smaller. Those were my top three favorite parts of the trip. In addition there was still a lot more that I learned on the trip!

People at the board told me that counties and districts can have laws that are separate from the federal government. I also learned that laws started from small ideas that could go really far. Another thing that they said is that the county executive was George Latimer who is also running for the senate which is a part of the legislative branch in Washington DC. One more thing that we were taught was that there is always an odd number of members in the committee and the board so there cannot be a tie in the voting. I honestly never knew about any of this until after the trip.

In conclusion I learned so much about the government and highly recommend it to anyone who likes politics. Have you ever gone to the board of legislators and if so, what did you learn and what were your three favorites?