CTE students discuss forestry with state lawmakers
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. >> Seventeen students and their instructors from the Environmental Conservation & Forestry program at the F. Donald Myers Education center in Saratoga Springs participated in Forestry Awareness Day at the Legislative Office Building in Albany on March 6.
FAD is sponsored by The Council of Forest Resource Organizations. Each year a committee identifies issues for volunteers, students and members of business and industry to raise with their local legislative officials. For 2017, topics included Forest Property Taxation, Urban Forestry, Community Forest, Wood Energy and Forest Health & Sustainability, Private Forest Stewardship Cost Share and the Environmental Protection Fund.
As students met legislators in Albany, they gave them a potted white spruce seedling as reminder of the issues they discussed.
In advance of the visit with legislators, 27 students in the program went to the New York State Tree Nursery in Saratoga Springs to work alongside foresters to learn about soil compaction and how to properly pot 300 white spruce seedlings into mugs, which were provided by The Council of Forest Resource Organizations.
Environmental Conservation & Forestry Instructor Dennis Flynn has been participating in the event since 2008.
“It is a great experience for students to get out and meet legislators. It is an opportunity for them to understand the role of a legislator and see them in their own work setting,” Flynn said. “And, senators and assemblymen also get to know the issues that are important to students and learn about their future plans.”
Greg Shambo from the Warrensburg Central School District said the lawmakers “were excited to talk to us and showed a lot of appreciation for our visit.”
CTE is a division of the WSWHE BOCES. It provides an array of classes for secondary school students as well as adults.