SCHUYLER Hall punctuates his sentences, capitalizes the word "I" and eschews ubiquitous online slang, like "lol" (laugh out loud). But the theme of his blog is what really sets him apart from the hundreds of local teenagers who put their musings online for the world to see.

He writes about politics and education. Schwarzenegger and teacher tenure. Congressional bills and local school board decisions. A recent entry was titled "Hayward School Board Thinks Consolidation and Improvement, But I Think Not."

The 17-year-old Mt. Eden High School senior sports an impressive Afro, calls Illinois Sen. Barack Obama his "homeboy" and was described by his classmate Marianne De Leon as outgoing, funny and loud. "You can't go to school and not know who Schuyler is," she said.

On his site, called Perspectives of Schuyler (schuylerhall.blogspot.com), he describes himself as an "opinionated teen on the left here to represent for education and youth!" Each entry begins with a brief summary of a news account or study and a link to the full report, followed by his take on the issue.

Through his clearly written and sometimes satirical entries, Hall aims to break through the apathy he sees almost everywhere he goes - - among adults, as well as teens -- by making people care about the world around them.

"If I can get one person to think about some topic and take a position that they would have been apathetic to before, I've done my mission," he said.

Nhu Nhu Nguyen, 16, a friend of Hall's who didn't use to follow the news closely, said the blog captured her attention and made her think about, and question, the political landscape.

"It's not just nonsense," she said. "It's interesting how he dissects current events."

Although she is too young to vote, Nguyen said "Perspectives of Schuyler" got her so fired up about the November special election, which included a number of ballot initiatives involving education, that she persuaded her parents to go to the polls.

Hall started the site in August, inspired by a summer of listening to conservative talk radio while cooped up in a warehouse as a file clerk. The teenager, who was born and raised in Hayward, has been active in the California Association of Student Councils since eighth grade. For several years, he was part of a youth delegation that presented reports on youth issues to the state board of education.

"It's been building up," he said. "Now I've finally found an outlet to put it all into."

Every day (except when he has too much homework), Hall scans the Reuters news wire, Google News and The Daily Review and reads through headlines e-mailed to him from the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times in search of issues that might be of interest or importance to people his age.

Hall doesn't know how many people are reading his blog. Nguyen said she knew of at least 20 who scan it regularly. Sarah Gonzales, president of the Hayward Board of Education, said last week that she hadn't heard of it and asked for the link. Hours later, she responded that she found it "really very interesting."

Hall's leanings tend to be liberal. Once, he said, another blogger called him a "communist" after he wrote, "Arnold Schwarzenegger doesn't like children," a satirical twist on the rapper Kanye West's infamous statement about President Bush and blacks in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. But, he said, he tries to keep his site balanced by including links to conservative reports.

One of these days, if he doesn't become a journalist, Hall just might find himself in the shoes of the politicians whose votes he posts on his blog.

"The ongoing joke is that I'm going to be the first black president," he said. "But I always say I'm going to be the second -- Barack Obama will be the first."