Backers of the initiative can now begin to collect signatures.

Easier said than done, especially for what is basically a one-man operation. Peter Mathews, a Southern California college professor, said he will be enlisting students around the state to gather the signatures, using Facebook and Twitter to generate interest.

Mathews has a website, RescueEducationCalifornia.org, and boasts the endorsement of the California Community Colleges Association.

That group's president, Ron Norton Reed, has pledged to gather signatures and send out fundraising letters.
Recently, the California State Los Angeles Associated Students Incorporated passed a resolution stating it would get the word out to begin collecting signatures.

"When students get educated, they'll get involved, especially when on issues of public interest and of interest to them," Mathews said.

He's also received the personal endorsement of Jack Scott, the chancellor of the state's community colleges.
But the hardy support of the education community is not the weapon they will need if the initiative gets on the ballot. They'd be going up against an industry that spent $90 million to defeat a similar oil extraction ballot measure in 2006.


The measure lost, 55 to 45 percent, despite the endorsements of former President Bill Clinton, former Vice President Al Gore and other luminaries who came to the state.

All they had to do was raise the specter of higher gas prices, and it was enough to spook voters. A difference, Mathews said, is that the revenues would have been earmarked for environmental programs. Revenues for schools might get a different reaction, he said.

The ballot measure has clauses that prohibit oil companies from offsetting costs by raising gas prices. Mathews argues that the price of gas is not established by oil extraction fees. When Texas and Alaska instituted theirs several years ago, the price of gas did not go up then.

"The price of gas at the pump is set by world markets, by speculators and Wall Street investors, as well as incidents like Libya," Mathews said. "It has nothing to do with extraction fees."

Mathews, who has run two unsuccessful campaigns for Congress, said this one "is the most important campaign I'll ever run because it'll rebuild the state's education system."

The tax would be $15 on each barrel of oil extracted from California and allocates the revenue to educational funding (for non-construction purposes) with 30 percent going to K-12, 48 percent to community colleges and 11 percent each to University of California and California State University.

The measure would prohibit oil companies from passing a tax on to refiners, gasoline stations or consumers