The James Logan Courier

By Rae Atabay and Hadiya Hussain, Courier Staff Writers

This whole week students have been encouraged to register to vote if they are already eighteen, or will be eighteen by November, to help our school by voting for prop 1522.

Proposition 1522 would generate about $3.5 billion for schools in California annually by imposing a 15% fee on the extraction of natural resources. This money actually belongs to the people of California, and not the oil corporations. By closing the oil extraction tax loophole, this could help our education in so many good ways that teachers would be put back to work, kindergarten through twelve grade classrooms would not be overcrowded, class sections would be reintroduced in all types of California colleges, tuition in Community Colleges would be able to be free again, and CSU and UCs would be affordable to students.

Senior, Philip Olay said, "We need all the help we can get from our classmates, and what's terrible is that barely anybody knows about the proposition."

The students volunteering to get other students to vote were upset that this voting event was not widely advertised in our school and that more students aren't aware of it.

This whole week the the volunteers managed to get a little more than one hundred students registers and committed to vote for the proposition. Although other bay area schools, like San Leandro High, were more proactive and have more than pledged 400 votes. The due date is April 15, and with the help of our students, our chance of sucess has gone up by 7%. The real sucess of this propisition passing depends on all of our California students.

If this is passed, it would get our economy back up and any strong economy needs educated people to compete in a global economy. This increase in revenue to all parts of public education would bring California back to the strong economy it used to be. This prop stresses that prosperity can only become real through public education. It is reasonable public policy to tax the extraction of our restricted natural resource for the future of younger children's education.

Public education is a right for all, and is something definitely worth fighting for.