Thousands of concerned parents, teachers and community friends of our Richmond students came out to meetings earlier this year to try to save our Richmond schools threatened with closure.

Now we need your help to  pass the Save Our Schools initiatives.

Due to State budget cutbacks, the West Contra Costa Unified School District was forced to plan on closing several Richmond schools. 

The Richmond City Council voted to pay to keep them open temporarily so that Richmond voters could decide if we supported a 1/2 % Utility Tax increase, to provide a stable long term funding source for saving the schools.

Because heavy industry will pay about 2/3 of the Utility Tax, regular Richmond residents will only pay about a penny per day.

A companion initiative Measure  advises the Richmond  Council to spend the proceeds of the Utility Tax increase on keeping Richmond's schools open.

Closing  Richmond's smaller neighborhood schools would hurt our kids' education, which in turn hurts property values, and local businesses' labor pool.

Moving students from smaller schools to larger, more impersonal schools makes it more likely that our students will be victimized by crimes like the recent Richmond High tragedy

By helping to qualify the 1/2% Utility Tax increase, and the Advisory Measure, for the June 2010 ballot, you'll be sending a simple message: its not acceptable for our kids to suffer because of the State budget cutback mess.  

If you can help gather signatures, do office work, or contribute, please contact me.

Thanks in advance for caring about our kids enough to do something real to help them.

Jim Rogers

510.867.5725

elirapty@aol.com