Charles Mercer
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Survey Responses
RESPONSES TO THE 2026 ATPE CANDIDATE SURVEY:
1. If elected, what are your top priorities for Texas public education?Please describe any specific goals or legislative initiatives you would pursue to strengthen the state’s public education system.
To reform Texas education, I would prioritize expanding school choice through vouchers and education savings accounts to empower parents and break public school monopolies, while shifting funding from property taxes to performance-based state allocations that follow the student. I would restore local control by decentralizing the Texas Education Agency, enhancing accountability through parental involvement and an improved A-F grading system. I would eliminate ideological indoctrination by banning Critical Race Theory and similar divisive concepts, refocusing curricula on core academics, American history, and civic values. Finally, I would support teachers with merit pay, reduced bureaucracy, and robust school safety measures—including armed guardians—to attract quality educators and protect students, all while building grassroots coalitions to pass priority legislation that puts families first over bureaucrats.
2. Public Education Funding:
The 89th Legislature passed an $8 billion school funding bill, HB 2. However, despite years of unanswered “inflationary challenges, a large majority of that funding was earmarked to specific programs and did not supply districts with significant flexible funding, leaving the majority of Texas students in districts with deficit budgets and other significant funding challenges. Do you believe Texas public schools should receive additional funding? If so, how should the state pay for it, and should that funding be earmarked at the state level or provide districts with flexible dollars?
I do feel Texas public schools require additional funding to halt the progress of left indoctrination within our own state. I would pursue narrowly tailored approaches to increase Texas state revenue without raising tax rates, focusing on enhance tax enforcement through targeted audits and digital compliance tools for underreported sales and franchise taxes, potentially recapturing $500 million to $1 billion yearly from non-compliance in high-volume industries like e-commerce and energy, without new burdens on compliant businesses. To supplement this as needed, I would advocate for Texas to offer time-limited incentives for relocating high-wage industries (e.g., tech and manufacturing) via streamlined permitting and temporary franchise tax credits, spurring job creation and boosting sales/franchise tax collections by 5-10% over five years through organic economic expansion.
3. ESA Vouchers:Education savings accounts (ESAs) redirect public funds to private or home schools. How do you believe Texas should fund public schools, traditional and charter, alongside ESA vouchers? How should ESA spending be held accountable to taxpayers?
I would advocate for robust safeguards: require participating private schools and providers to be accredited and undergo annual financial audits with public reporting.
4. Teacher Recruitment and Retention:Under HB 2, passed in 2025, all educators in core content courses (math, English, science, and social studies) must be certified by 2030. While this is a good start, more can and should be done to ensure high-quality teachers continue to enter the classroom. What are your suggestions to improve the quality of the new teacher pipeline?
In a manner similar to the state of Michigan, a vigorous examination progress may be required. I'd advocate for something similar to that or the FINRA continuing education format where off-time paid-training is scheduled to ensure the state's standards are met.
5. Educator Pay and Benefits:The 89th Legislature passed legislation creating a new mechanism to provide only classroom teachers with tiered raises based on early years of service and their district’s student enrollment. While the raises were significant, they did not apply to all campus educators, and the program created a significant negative funding stream at the district level due to unfunded increased costs for non-salary compensation tied to payroll, such as TRS retirement contributions. Do you support a state-funded across-the-board pay raise for all Texas educators? How would you ensure that compensation keeps pace with inflation and remains competitive with other professions?
Yes, I would; and generally in line with the financial proposal I noted before; to keep pace with inflation, one would maintain our existing tax structure and supplement with our own capital and business programs that capture a part of that inflation or economic growth to hedge against increased prices.
6. Educator Health Care:The high cost of health insurance for active and retired educators continues to reduce take-home pay, with educators shouldering the vast majority of their ever-increasing heath care costs. How would you address the affordability and sustainability of educator health care, particularly the TRS-ActiveCare and TRS-Care programs?
To address the affordability and sustainability of educator health care through TRS-ActiveCare and TRS-Care, I would first champion the recent reforms allowing school districts to opt out of TRS-ActiveCare starting in the 2025-26 school year, enabling them to negotiate competitive private insurance plans that could lower premiums
For active educators, I would push for expanded health savings accounts (HSAs) within high-deductible options like TRS-ActiveCare HD, coupled with state incentives such as tax credits or matching contributions to offset out-of-pocket costs, reducing reliance on take-home pay deductions.
Do you believe the Teacher Retirement System of Texas (TRS) should remain a defined-benefit pension plan for all current and future members? If not, what is your plan to provide a secure retirement for Texas educators, particularly considering that state law has been set up such that most districts do not participate in Social Security?
I believe the defined-benefit pension plan should remain in place for all current members and retirees to honor existing promises and provide the reliable, lifetime income security that educators have earned through decades of service.
8. Accountability and Assessment Reform:The Legislature has passed a new “through-year” multi-test model under HB 8. What role should standardized testing play in evaluating students, teachers, and schools? Should test results continue to determine A–F accountability ratings or teacher pay?
I support this shift from a single high-stakes STAAR exam to shorter, adaptive beginning-, middle-, and end-of-year assessments, as it better measures individual student growth over time and returns instructional days to classrooms by limiting redundant local benchmarks.
However, test results should not solely or primarily determine A–F accountability ratings or teacher pay. For school ratings, I would advocate diversifying beyond end-of-year scores to include robust growth measures from the through-year data, college/career/military readiness indicators, graduation rates, chronic absenteeism, and local metrics like parent engagement—ensuring ratings reflect comprehensive performance while maintaining transparency and rigor without over-relying on any single test.
Recent legislative debates have focused on “parental rights” in education. In your view, what is the appropriate balance between accommodating the often conflicting wishes of individual parents while maintaining policies that reflect the broader community’s educational priorities and still providing consistency and an appropriate level of professional deference to educators?
In my view, the appropriate balance in parental rights starts with empowering individual parents as the primary decision-makers for their children's education—through robust school choice, transparent curricula access, and veto power over objectionable content.
Professional deference to educators should be granted for pedagogical methods and classroom management, but not for ideological overreach; teachers deserve respect as experts in instruction, yet parents must have ultimate oversight to counter any non-scientific or anti-American indoctrination, as you rightly highlight with Democrat-influenced textbooks and curricula—ultimately, this parent-centric model promotes accountability, reduces bureaucratic control, and safeguards against the very biases you describe by letting market forces and family choice prevail over top-down mandates.
HB 3 (2023) imposed new school safety requirements but did not fully fund them. Although the 89th Legislature increased the School Safety Allotment, many districts continue to face substantial unfunded staffing and facility costs associated with school safety laws. How would you make schools safer and ensure the state provides adequate funding to meet safety mandates?
I would strongly advocate expanding the Texas School Guardian Program—partnering with local law enforcement and DPS-approved trainers—to encourage voluntary, rigorously trained armed teachers and staff as a cost-effective way to harden campuses, especially in rural or under-resourced districts where response times are long or full-time officers are unaffordable.
This empowers willing educators with concealed carry options after comprehensive screening, psychological evaluations, and ongoing ALERRT-based training (fully subsidized by the state), providing an immediate armed response layer that deters threats and buys time until police arrive—all while respecting Second Amendment rights and local control. By combining robust funding increases with this guardian expansion, we ensure no school is left vulnerable due to unfunded mandates, putting student protection and fiscal responsibility first over bureaucratic hurdles.
What do you believe is the proper role of the State Board of Education, the Texas Education Agency, and local school districts in setting curriculum standards and selecting instructional materials?
In my view, the State Board of Education (SBOE) should lead in adopting and periodically updating the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS)—which are currently undergoing revisions in key areas like social studies (under review in 2025) and recent updates in science, CTE, and others implemented or forthcoming—to ensure rigorous, factual standards in core subjects while rejecting non-scientific or anti-American biases from national progressive influences like Common Core-inspired programs. The SBOE must rigorously vet instructional materials for alignment and neutrality, mandating advance public disclosure for parental review.
The Texas Education Agency (TEA) should support enforcement, coordinate transparent reviews, and provide compliance oversight without micromanaging districts—emphasizing fraud prevention and resources while requiring early public presentation of materials to counter leftist university-driven indoctrination, justifying a strong state role.
Local school districts should select from SBOE-approved materials, adapt to community values, and incorporate supplements, with accountability via parental input and elections to preserve educator professionalism and local flexibility. This parent-prioritizing framework safeguards against the biases you describe through state rigor and community choice.
State law allows educators and other public employees to voluntarily join professional associations such as ATPE and have membership dues deducted from their paychecks at no cost to taxpayers. Do you support or oppose allowing public employees to continue exercising this right? Why or why not?
I support allowing public employees, including educators, to continue voluntarily joining professional associations like ATPE and having membership dues deducted from their paychecks. This right—established in state law since 1995 and at no cost to taxpayers, as districts can pass any administrative expenses to the organizations—respects individual freedom and convenience for busy professionals facing significant personal, mental, and financial demands in their roles
I believe preserving this voluntary option empowers teachers as professionals and strengthens public education overall.