Garnering support for Proposition 30 during last week’s visit to Ramona Elementary School was Gov. Jerry Brown’s main objective, he said during a press conference outside the school.

“That’s why I’m here; to organize, to galvanize, to mobilize, a force that can take this message all over California,” Brown said.

Brown spoke to members of the news media, who accounted for the majority of the spectators, from a podium surrounded by strategically placed Proposition 30 supporters.

There  was also an EC student in the crowd.

“ I’m a student who believes a vote makes a difference and we all need to do our part,” Dayna Johnson, 28, political science major, said.

Johnson said one reason she was there to support Proposition 30 was because of  the lack of class availability.

“Because our community college is so overcrowded, I can’t get the one class I need to graduate, to move on with my life,” she said.

The state of education in California was not looking good and “it was time to fix our schools with real money,” Brown said.

He said it was time for the wealthy members of the California population to give back to their communities.

“Proposition 30 is very simple,” Brown said. “It asks those who are most blessed, those who have done the best in their lives and who have the most money to contribute one or two or three percent  to help our kids, to help our schools and to finally balance our budget after ten years of kicking the can down the road.”

George Amaya, a fifth grade teacher at Kornblum Elementary,  said that he became a teacher because he believed “that a quality education can make a difference in the life of a child,”  but the ability to provide that quality education was slipping away.

“We have more students in our classes, fewer staff and fewer materials yet, we are expected to maintain the increasingly high standards  that the state and all of us demand of ourselves,” Amaya said.

Amaya also added that Proposition 30 wouldn’t completely fix California’s educational problems but that it would help put schools “back on a road to recovery.”

Johnson said she didn’t trust the politicians in Sacramento, but that Proposition 30 was what  it was going to take to put the college back on track and it was time for students to stop being complacent and take matters into their own hands.

“That’s why I’m out here today backing Prop 30, because students need to know this is what we have to do to get money into our community college,” Johnson said. “It’s not up to politicians, it’s not up to the people in front of the cameras, it’s up to us.”