NBC5 Chicago has a story about the new Illinois state symbol. The Tully Monster is the Illinois State Fossil and we have Fluorite as the State Mineral, now Dolostone is the State Rock. Governor Pritzker signed the bill yesterday - June 6th, 2022! We posted back in 2021 that the Pleasantdale Middle School in Burr Ridge, IL was pushing for this effort.
Upon learning Illinois didn't have a state rock, students at Pleasantdale School in Burr Ridge and Maplebrook Elementary School in Naperville took it upon themselves and decided that needed to change.
So, they interviewed regional geology scholars, visited museums, completed research and then got schools all across Illinois involved.
The students created a ballot with three choices, and dolostone was the winner.
"With hundreds of participating schools and thousands of votes from Carbondale to Rockford to Chicago, the choice was clear - dolostone emerged victorious," Pritzker said. "And it's no surprise dolostone, a specific form of limestone, forms most of our state's bedrock in the early 1800s."
The student involvement didn't stop with the voting process as they then worked with lawmakers to develop the legislation.
House Bill 4261, which sought to designate dolostone as the official state rock of Illinois, was first introduced in January and became a reality Monday, as Pritzker signed it into law.
Jennifer Lauermann, a Pleasantdale teacher whose students orchestrated the effort, said she was so proud of their effort and determination.
"The students, we'd started this project during a very crazy time, two years ago almost," she said Monday. "And I was teaching in a cafeteria and...there was a teachable moment that just exploded. A couple of kids started talking about rocks and pretty much, we really focused a lot of the year on geology. I'll never forget this."
