The students in Kerry Vumbaco’s class at Pinewood Elementary in the Mohonasen school district are persuasive lobbyists. They’re leading the charge in an initiative to name an official state butterfly, and they are pushing hard for one particular candidate the endangered Karner blue.
I voted for the Karner blue,` said Nino Tortorici, 9, a member of Vumbaco’s third-through-fifth grade, special education class. Tortorici and his classmates said that they liked the butterfly because it is on the endangered species list and because it is found in the local Pine Bush Preserve.
According to Vumbaco, it can even be found in the school’s backyard.
The 11-student class spent a majority of the fall researching and reporting on New York’s butterflies, each with exotic names like the Black Swallowtail, Milbert’s Tortoiseshell, the Mourning Cloak, the Red Spotted Purple or White Admiral and the leader of the polls, the Karner blue.
As part of the project, teams of students were assigned to specific butterflies and were asked to come up with basic facts about their habitat, life cycle, diet and appearance. One fifth grade student, Carlos Delopaz, researched the Mourning Cloak all by himself.
`It’s the first butterfly you see in the spring and the last to disappear in the fall,` he said in his presentation of interesting facts about the insect.
After completing their research, the students designed a PowerPoint presentation and posters with colorful renderings of each butterfly. Then, with the help of their teachers, the students starred in their own informational news video that urged third, fourth and fifth graders to vote for their favorite butterfly.
Dressed in their finest clothes, each of the students served as a news anchor in a broadcast watched by the whole school. The broadcast told students how to vote for the butterflies on a school Web site.
Students voted in the computer lab during the week of Oct. 29. The election drew an astonishing 97 percent participation by the three grades. The tiny Karner Blue, only 1-inch in diameter, was a big winner, garnering 252 votes and winning the election by a landslide.
News of the student election caught the attention of state Assemblyman George Amedore, R-Rotterdam, who made a visit to Pinewood on Friday, Dec. 21.
`I bet you’re anxious to know the outcome of the state election, but it’s a slow process,` he told the class. `You did a great job with your research and television program.`
Amedore gave the students a lesson on how a bill comes about in the Legislature and the subsequent process of how a bill becomes a law. `It all begins with an idea,` he said, `kind of like the way a butterfly starts out small, as a caterpillar.`
Amedore said that adopting an official state butterfly is a great idea and that he would talk to fellow law-makers to make inquiries about reported votes from schools across the state when the Legislature returns to session in January. He said he’d do what he could to speed up the process and to provide the Pinewood students with an answer to their biggest question ` Will the Karner blue be the official butterfly of New York?
`It’s important to work together as you have worked on this project ` as a class and as a whole school. You worked together as a team,` said Amedore. `I have a suspicion that even the governor is going to know about this.`
The state butterfly project is part of an initiative led by state Assemblywoman Sandra Galef, D-Ossining. Galef urged students across the state to hold elections for an official state butterfly after she read a letter by a fourth grade student who wondered why New York had an official state fish, but didn’t yet have a butterfly of its own. Galet said the Assembly would tally all reported votes. According to Amedore, the Assembly could draft legislation for a state butterfly as early as January or February.“
