The class decided to find out everything that would happen to their petition on its journey and make sure to be there when anything important happened along the way. First, their petition had to become a bill. The House Clerk in the House of Representatives takes care of this. He read their ladybug petition and gave it its own number, H.5155. Then, he had to decide which of the committees in the House of Representatives to send the bill to.
Different committees study different kinds of subjects.
When the House Clerk picked the right committee, he had copies of the bill made and sent to all of the senators and representatives on the committee, so they could study it. Meanwhile, at school, the children in Ms. Johnson's class were busy making ladybug costumes to wear when the time came for them to visit the State House. A committee has a public hearing for each bill it studies. At a hearing, anyone can come and say why he or she thinks a bill should or should not be made a law or passed into law. On the day of the public hearing, Ms. Johnson's second grade class dressed in ladybug costumes got on the yellow school bus and rode all the way to Boston to the State House.