Cyberfair '02
Carpinteria, California, USA

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Interview with Senator Jack O'Connell

By Jessica Perez

During our tour of the State Capitol we had an appointment to meet Senator Jack O'Connell representing the part of California where we live. First we met with his Aide Earlene Arnold. She took us on a tour and gave us lots of interesting facts about what a Senator does. She has worked at the State Capitol for 35 years. She told us some very funny stories and about the Capitol cat! Yes, they adopted a cat. Senator O’Connell met with us later in the day and he took us on another tour and we were able to ask him a few questions about the environment in Carpinteria because he used to live in Carpinteria and he knows the environmental issues that Carpinteria has. He gave us some very informative answers.

Property is a big issue and some schools in L.A. have to have their playground on the roof because they have no other open spaces. He said that mostly he is worried about the construction and he wants to make sure that the class sizes are reduced to a maximum of twenty to one in grades Kindergarten through fifth grade. He has introduced 15 new bills all of them have been on education. One bill requires a child under the age of 18 to wear a helmet skateboarding. Earlene told us that it costs approximately $5000 dollars to process a bill 10 years ago she was sure it would cost a lot more now. Senator O’Connell told us that approximately 60% of the schools are 30 years old or older and he is very interested in fixing these schools. He is also interested in getting more teachers for our schools.

Tour of the State Capitol

Diary of the Day By the 5 Student Representatives

By Julia Callender, Alex Huang, Jessica Perez, Nicole Pearce, Nadirah Porter,

NICOLE PEARCE

We woke up about 6:00 - 6:30. I was unsure if today was going to be fun, hard, or boring. We had fruit, waffles, and hot chocolate in our room. We ate in, in order to meet our 7:45 am departure from the hotel. I was tired.

At 8:00 we went to check out the Convention Center. We met CTAP members from Region 8. I thought we were going to present in the main room, on a podium with microphones and a large projection screen. We then found that we were going to present in a booth, while other region’s presented at the same time. I was relieved. We got our nametags; t-shirts and we got instructions about our schedule for the day. I was still tired.

JESSICA PEREZ

I was excited and nervous as we left for the Capitol. I was excited to meet Hannah Beth Jackson and Jack O Connell. I was nervous that I might say something wrong in front of them. Walking to the Capitol was fun. We were friends, laughing and joking around. The Capitol was amazing. It was cool with a lot of interesting paintings and architecture. Our guide, John Ragan, who was originally from Oxnard and grew up at Carpinteria beaches, was nice and funny. He told us jokes. He offered a lot if insightful information. We got a VIP tour, which took us to a lot of places people don’t normally get to go.

ALEX HUANG

On the tour, we went on the floor of the Senate and the Assembly. The Senate room had laptops on each desk. The carpet was red. There was a statue of Minerva (Greek God of Wisdom), and a portrait of George Washington, which was painted by Jane Stewart.

The Assembly room carpet was green. Each Assemblyperson had a voting button (green for yes/red for no). The ceiling had California Wildflowers painted in relief. The desks were made of wood and folded up like school desks. Both the Assembly and the Senate chambers had second story galleries for public viewing.

NADIRAH PORTER

We met Assemblywoman Hannah Beth Jackson in her office. I thought her office would be large and luxurious, but it was smaller and sort of plain. We asked her a few questions and she told us about environmental bills that she has proposed before the Assembly. She was gentle and nice. She was interested in talking to us despite her busy schedule.

We met State Senator Jack O Connell. He was very busy. He had just flown in from his district. He took us to the Senate floor. He answered a few of our questions and took pictures with us. We were very interested in education. He knew about our school and Carpinteria.

JULIA CALLENDER

All of us were nervous about our presentations. The hall was very noisy with other presenter’s presentations. Our booth (Region VIII) was kind of big. It had a lot of room for us to work with. We got to work with a SmartBoard (a projection screen that you can touch and click, your finger is the mouse). We worked with a computer that had our PowerPoint and web sites locations. Our presentation went great. Everyone spoke well about their parts. We are really proud of ourselves.