Michelle Horner is the principal of Wawona Elementary School in Mariposa, California. Actually, she’s “the teacher and the principal and the counselor.” Wawona is a one-room school, kindergarten through sixth grade. All of the children’s parents are federal employees who live in and protect Yosemite National Park.

Even a one-room school needs textbooks, equipment and furniture. When the school went into its tenth year of deficits, Horner turned to Congress for help. But Congress couldn’t just hand her the money. She needed a law.

The Making of a Law follows the process of creating a law. Guiding us are people like Principal Horner and former School Board President Max Stauffer, who went to Congress to advocate for a new law, as well as Congressman George Radanovich, who was the bill’s first sponsoring member, and Senator Dianne Feinstein, the bill’s sponsor in the Senate and Chairman of the Committee on Rules and Administration. Together with experts and constitutional scholars, they walk us through their goals, strategies, compromises, and lines in the sand – as a bill becomes a law.