U.S. CONGRESSMAN Mike Thompson, right, talks with Benicia High School teacher Josh Bradley on Monday as BUSD Trustee Dana Dean looks on. Keri Luiz/Staff

‘These kids get it,’ says Mike Thompson, D-Napa

By Keri Luiz
Assistant Editor

The man who hopes to be Benicia’s new congressman, Mike Thompson, paid a visit to the city Monday to get a firsthand look at Benicia High School’s new “green” academy, ECH2O.

He was impressed by what he saw.

“It’s wonderful!” the Napa Democrat said. “So often you hear criticism about kids today. Nonsense! Kids today are fantastic.”

Accompanied by Superintendent Janice Adams and Benicia Unified School District Trustee Dana Dean, Thompson, a congressional veteran who may become Benicia’s representative because of last year’s redistricting, toured the environmental “school-within-a-school” for 10th- to 12-graders that launched last fall.

Thompson heard teacher Josh Bradley and students explain the toxicity tests they are currently conducting on water at Bello Ranch, located off Lake Herman Road.

“Our control is Arrowhead spring water, and our experiment is Bello Ranch water,” explained junior Nicole Ameling, referring to a creek at the ranch.

“We put five ‘Cerio-d’ in each tube,” she said, referring to Ceriodaphnia dubia, a species of water flea often used to test water toxicity levels. “We do tests to take the temperature, the ph of Bello Ranch water, the dissolved oxygen, conductivity. We check every day to see if the ‘cerio’ live through the days we have them in the containers.”

Another student, Kyle Blakeman, put a beaker of the water on a heating plate to ensure its temperature was correct for the experiment. Then he checked to make sure the water had the correct amount of oxygen — if it didn’t, he said, he would have to aerate it.

Thompson was hands-on, too, taking his turn observing the ceriodaphnia in the testing cups.

He said the students’ work — in these experiments as well as others they are conducting — are important locally and on a greater scale. “This not only helps the rural areas where they’ve got fish, trees, and grasslands and stuff that you’re trying to make sure to keep in balance, but it’s also very important in suburban and urban areas.

“It’s neat. These are the sort of classes that keep people plugged in,” Thompson said. “They see relevance, that ‘what I’m studying here has an application.’ I would assume that every kid in here gets the importance of the environment to their future.

“These kids get it. They understand the importance. They understand the importance of their community. And the teacher, just the brief time I’ve had the chance to talk to him, certainly impressed the heck out of me.”

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