James Talarico*

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Survey Responses

RESPONSES TO THE 2024 ATPE CANDIDATE SURVEY:

1. If elected, what are your top priorities for public education?

Even though we teach one in 10 children in the United States, our education system has failed to keep pace with our population growth. Texas has failed year after year to adequately fund its school districts, leaving local property taxpayers to pick up the tab, and forcing districts to slash funding for everything from music programs to athletics to a bare minimum. This is why crafting HB 3 and fixing our broken school finance system, was my top priority of the 86th Legislative Session.

During the 87th session, I passed the first-ever cap on pre-K class sizes in Texas, a policy to open up millions in funds for social-emotional learning programs, and a law requiring all incarcerated minors in Texas be given the opportunity to graduate with a high school diploma. For these major accomplishments, I was honored to be named one of the Top 10 Best Legislators by Texas Monthly magazine.

During the 88th session, I proposed a $15,000 across-the-board teacher pay raise and a 25% pay raise for all school support staff, passed a bill to require Narcan to be placed on all Texas public school campuses with funding from the state, and helped lead the pro-public education coalition that defeated Governor Abbott’s private school voucher scam.

I support more robust benefit plans and pay increases for teachers, increased benefits for our retired teachers, better school lunch offerings, and expanded extracurricular programs. I also want to continue focusing on universal full-day early childhood education, promoting restorative justice practices in schools, tax-free school supplies for educators, civics education, promoting social-emotional learning programs in schools, and of course, finally receiving a funding increase for our public schools.

2. Voucher programs take many forms (tax credits, scholarships, education savings accounts, etc.) and are either universal or aimed at specific subpopulations (special education students, low-income students, students attending schools with poor A-F accountability ratings, etc.). Would you vote to create a voucher program of any type to pay for students to attend non-public K-12 schools, such as private or home schools?

No. I am against voucher scams in any shape or size and will never vote to defund our public schools.

3. In 2023, the Texas Legislature passed House Bill (HB) 3 requiring a number of new school safety measures. However, many believe the Legislature did not adequately increase funding to cover the cost of the mandates in HB 3 or other locally adopted school safety measures. How would you work to make schools safer and ensure such initiatives are properly funded?

Less than a year after the tragedy in Uvalde, my colleagues in the Texas Legislature put another unfunded mandate on public schools with HB 3's school safety mandates. While I support increased school safety efforts, I will continue to push for funding those mandates at the state level, whether through the Texas House's proposed increase to the school safety allotment or through those proposed in the Fully Fund our Future Act. Most importantly, I’ve made clear to my colleagues that they can’t get away with offering “thoughts and prayers” rhetoric while loosening gun laws the next day. After more mass shootings in Texas than we can list, I will keep fighting to make our communities safer with common-sense gun safety legislation, not by arming teachers.

4. Despite a record-breaking surplus of $38 billion during the 2023 legislative session, school funding formulas were not increased to keep pace with inflation since they were last adjusted in 2019. Do you believe Texas public schools should receive additional funding? If so, how should the state pay for it?

Governor Abbott's immoral and unconscionable withholding of all increases in public school funding to try to pass his private school voucher scam was never about helping kids. The Governor and his billionaire mega-donors are intentionally starving our public schools so that they can blame public schools for underperformance to justify their voucher scams. We must increase school funding – and the least we can do is catch up to 2019 levels adjusted for inflation. I was proud to help write the Fully Fund our Future Act which would have dramatically increased school funding. I am open to any means that would provide much-needed additional funding to our public schools and prefer a long-term sustainable funding stream. I believe we must close tax loopholes that allow commercial property owners to unfairly reduce their taxes, passing the responsibility of funding our schools to residential property owners. I was proud to have authored legislation in the 86th session that would have required the sales price disclosure for commercial properties. This would have been a crucial step forward to securing necessary long-term revenue streams for education.

5. Texas has faced growing teacher shortages in recent years, with many schools hiring uncertified teachers to fill the gaps. How would you work to ensure Texas public schools have an adequate number of trained and certified teachers?

As a former middle school teacher, I am deeply concerned with the dire shortage of school staff in Texas. Ultimately, the best way to have adequate numbers of trained and certified teachers is to listen to Governor Abbott's own Teacher Vacancy Task Force which recommended increasing teacher pay. We must also work to increase teacher retirement benefits and minimize the ever-increasing workload we place on our teachers.

6. Inadequate compensation hampers the recruitment and retention of high-quality educators. Do you support a state-funded across-the-board pay raise for all Texas educators?

Absolutely. I was proud to work with ATPE to author legislation during the 88th session that would have provided all Texas teachers with a $15,000 pay raise and all school support staff with a 25% pay raise. Because Texas currently falls in the bottom half of all states for teacher pay, thousands of teachers are leaving the profession to find work that can pay the bills — and the same goes for support staff. This bill would have finally made Texas competitive in teacher pay and I will continue to fight for a substantial and meaningful teacher pay raise.

7. The high cost of health insurance available to educators is a significant factor decreasing their take-home pay. How would you address the challenge of rising health care costs facing Texas educators and ensure access to affordable health care?

Skyrocketing healthcare costs have made it a lot more expensive to be a teacher. Regarding health insurance, we need to ensure the recent changes to TRS-Care will not result in denied care. Given the Legislature’s inability to address the shortfall facing TRS-Care, our retirees will face higher premiums and benefit reductions if the state does nothing.

I believe that teachers’ benefits need to keep pace with inflation and rising premiums. The 13th check was a step in the right direction but didn’t solve the very real problems our educators face. Texas has long neglected its duty to fund its benefits programs, failing year after year to meet its obligations to state employees. Rather than continuing to rely on funding stopgaps for each biennium, I would support a permanent solution to the funding formula for TRS-Care including increasing the percentage amount applied to the state payroll to align insurance costs to actual health care costs.

8. What do you feel is the proper role of standardized testing in the Texas public education system? For instance, should student test scores be used as a metric in determining teacher pay, school accountability ratings, evaluating teachers, measuring student progress, etc.?

While any educator will tell you that assessment is a necessary part of any successful classroom, I don’t believe state standardized tests should be the sole, or even the majority, means of evaluating teachers. Teachers and students are so much more than the results of a single test.

Instead, the role of these tests should be to help with benchmarking and agenda-setting and to offer teachers perspective on their students’ progress. Great teachers seamlessly integrate assessment into their lessons and continually collect quantitative and qualitative data on their students’ learning. Then, they use this data to inform their instruction. The state should adopt this same model.

In some ways, standardized testing has improved our field in the past three decades by elevating data-driven instruction and ensuring all student populations are being served. However, the current testing regime represents an overcorrection and must be addressed.

9. In your opinion, what is the proper balance between accommodating an individual parent’s or student’s wishes and the taxpaying community’s interest in directing and maintaining an optimal educational environment for the student population as a whole?

I am a strong supporter of parental rights and I believe in choice within the public school system through innovations like magnets and academies. When proponents of voucher scams argue that parental rights mean that parents are the only stakeholders in their child’s education or that choice means that the state should provide no-strings-attached funding to schools without accreditation standards, they are being disingenuous. All Texans pay into our public education system for the societal benefit of an educated populace. Our state has a critical interest in maintaining the function of the public school system – where parents remain the best advocates and primary decision-makers for the lives of their own children.

10. Do you believe the Teacher Retirement System (TRS) should be maintained as a traditional defined-benefit pension plan for all future, current, and retired educators, or do you support converting TRS to a defined-contribution structure that is more like a 401(k) plan, in which future benefits are not guaranteed?

I support traditional defined benefit pension plans. While contribution plans may be cheaper, they shift the burden of retirement savings to teachers, rather than the state, and put our educators’ futures at risk. After a teacher dedicates their entire life to empowering the next generation, they deserve to have a secure retirement, and that’s achievable only through defined benefits plans. As a state legislator, I will continue to fight to protect retirees’ pensions and health care.

11. State law allows educators and other public employees to voluntarily choose to join professional associations such as ATPE and have membership dues deducted from their paychecks at no cost to taxpayers. Do you support or oppose letting all public employees continue to exercise this right?

I support allowing public employees to decide what to do with their own paychecks. It’s not the role of the State of Texas to prevent teachers from automatically deducting their association dues, especially at zero cost to the taxpayers. Overturning this law would needlessly harm unions and associations that advocate for our educators. As a proud former teacher union member myself, I strongly encourage all educators to join a union or association.
 

RESPONSES TO THE 2022 ATPE CANDIDATE SURVEY:

1. If elected, what will be your top priorities for public education?

Even though we teach one in 10 children in the United States, our education system has failed to keep pace with our population growth. Texas has failed year after year to adequately fund its school districts, leaving local property taxpayers to pick up the tab, and forcing districts to slash funding for everything from music programs to athletics to a bare minimum. This is why crafting HB 3, and fixing our broken school finance system, was my top priority of the 86th Legislative Session.

During the 87th session, I passed the first-ever cap on pre-K class sizes in Texas, a policy to open up millions in funds for social-emotional learning programs, a $25 cap on insulin copays, and a law requiring all incarcerated minors in Texas be given the opportunity to graduate with a high school diploma. For these major accomplishments, I was honored to be named one of the Top 10 Best Legislators by Texas Monthly magazine.

I want to continue focusing on universal full-day early childhood education, promoting restorative justice practices in schools, tax-free school supplies for educators, civics education, and promoting social-emotional learning programs in schools.

That being said, every session should be a school finance session, and we must continue working to provide a sustainable revenue stream for our public education system. I support more robust benefit plans and pay increases for teachers, supporting our retired teachers, better school lunch offerings, and expanded extracurricular programs.

2. What are your recommendations for funding public education, including securing the necessary revenue to sustain the improvements made by House Bill 3 in 2019? Do you believe additional funding is needed?

While HB 3 was historic school finance legislation, there is much work still left to do including finding sustainable revenue streams to ensure we keep the long-term promises we made in HB 3 to properly fund public education. Simply relying on a high-performing economy to properly educate our students and support our educators is irresponsible — especially so in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. I believe we must close tax loopholes that allow commercial property owners to unfairly reduce their taxes, passing the responsibility of funding our schools to residential property owners. I was proud to have authored legislation in the 86th session that would have required the sales price disclosure for commercial properties. This would have been a crucial step forward to securing necessary long-term revenue streams for education.

3. How would you address the challenge of rising health care costs facing Texas educators and ensure that active and retired educators have access to affordable health care?

Skyrocketing healthcare costs have made it a lot more expensive to be a teacher. Regarding health insurance, we need to ensure the recent changes to TRS-Care will not result in denied care. Given the Legislature’s inability to address the entire $1 billion shortfall facing TRS-Care, our retirees will face higher premiums and benefit reductions if the state does nothing.

I believe that teachers’ benefits need to keep pace with inflation and rising premiums. The 13th check was a step in the right direction but didn’t solve the very real problems our educators face. Texas has long neglected its duty in funding its benefits programs, failing year after year to meet its obligations to state employees. Rather than continuing to rely on funding stopgaps each biennium, I would support a permanent solution to the funding formula for TRS-Care including increasing the percentage amount applied to the state payroll to align insurance costs to actual health care costs.

4. Do you believe the Teacher Retirement System (TRS) should be maintained as a traditional defined benefit pension plan for all future, current, and retired educators, or do you support converting TRS to a defined contribution plan that is more like a 401(k) plan, in which future benefits are not guaranteed?

I support traditional defined benefit pension plans. While contribution plans may be cheaper, they shift the burden of retirement savings to teachers, rather than the state, and put our educators’ futures at risk. After a teacher dedicates their entire life to empowering the next generation, they deserve to have a secure retirement, and that’s achievable only through defined benefits plans. As a state legislator, I will continue to fight to protect retirees’ pensions and health care.

5. What do you feel is the proper role of standardized testing in the Texas public education system? For instance, should student test scores be used for teacher pay, school accountability ratings, evaluating teachers, measuring student progress, etc.?

While any educator will tell you that assessment is a necessary part of any successful classroom, I don’t believe state standardized tests should be the sole, or even the majority, means of evaluating teachers. Teachers and students are so much more than the results of a single test.

Instead, the role of these tests should be to help with benchmarking and agenda-setting and to offer teachers perspective on their students’ progress. Great teachers seamlessly integrate assessment into their lessons and continually collect quantitative and qualitative data on their students’ learning. Then, they use this data to inform their instruction. The state should adopt this same model.

In some ways, standardized testing has improved our field in the past three decades by elevating data-driven instruction and ensuring all student populations are being served. However, the current testing regime represents an overcorrection and must be addressed.

6. Would you vote to create any type of voucher, tax credit, scholarship, education savings account, or other program aimed at paying for students, including any subpopulation of students, to attend non-public K-12 schools, such as private or home schools?

No.

7. State law allows educators and other public employees to voluntarily choose to join professional associations such as ATPE and have membership dues deducted from their paychecks at no cost to taxpayers. Do you support or oppose letting all public employees continue to exercise this right?

I support allowing public employees to decide what to do with their own paychecks. It’s not the role of the State of Texas to prevent teachers from automatically deducting their association dues, especially at zero cost to the taxpayers. Overturning this law would needlessly harm unions and associations that advocate for our educators. As a proud former teacher union member myself, I strongly encourage all educators to join a union or association.

8. What role, if any, should charter schools have in the public education system, and do you feel the number of charter schools operating in Texas should be reduced or expanded?

I believe there is a role for high-quality nonprofit public charter schools in our education system. Initially, the charter school system was created to support traditional public schools as laboratories of innovation to test different pedagogies and identify best practices that could be implemented at scale in traditional public schools. As a teacher in a traditional public school in San Antonio ISD, I used innovative classroom management techniques pioneered by Houston’s KIPP Public Charter School network.

Unfortunately, that’s not the system we have now, but the system I believe we should return to. Therefore, my primary concern is not with the number of public charter schools, but with the quality of public charter schools and their utility to our traditional public education system. I strongly support efforts to level the playing field between public charter schools and traditional public schools as well as legislation to encourage productive collaboration between these two systems.

9. How much freedom should school districts have to make decisions during disease outbreaks, such as requiring face coverings and immunizations or transitioning to remote instruction?

None of us want to have to make difficult decisions on how to keep Texans safe during this pandemic, especially when our safety comes at the cost of essential social development and providing our kids with the best quality education. I trust local leaders to make the best decisions they can for their communities, using guidance from healthcare experts and the CDC. Statute has long allowed school districts to take public health measures, and they should retain this ability.

10. What do you believe is the proper role of virtual education within the public education system? Do you believe full-time virtual education should be expanded, and if so, under what circumstances?

While I share the concerns of educators about the long-term effects of virtual learning on the academic and social-emotional needs of our students, I supported SB 15 because the funding it provides is necessary during such a challenging time for students and teachers. It is crucial that we continue monitoring student progress in remote learning environments, and I believe the Texas Legislature should revisit these issues next legislative session. I would oppose efforts to use virtual schools to privatize public education and would oppose legislation that would extend or remove the sunset date on district-level virtual schools.

11. What do you feel should be the state’s role (versus the role of school districts or individual educators) in decisions about public school curriculum and instructional materials?

For years, Texas educators have expressed concern about the increasing number of unfunded state mandates and overly-prescriptive policies. I believe, whenever possible, the Texas Legislature should create flexibility for local educators to meet local challenges. It’s inappropriate for the state legislature to interfere in local control or stifle community-driven innovations like lengthening the school year or experimenting with new programs.

However, certain protections should be instituted to protect educators, students, and families. I have grave concerns with districts using exemptions from class-size limits to cut costs. Oversight can, and is necessary, to protect kids and teachers. However, we should balance state oversight with local control.

12. The COVID-19 pandemic and additional instructional support needed to remediate students’ learning losses have placed additional strain on public schools’ staffing needs. How would you work to ensure classrooms are appropriately staffed, teachers’ workloads are manageable, and planning time is not sacrificed amid these challenges?

The past two years have only added to the extent our teachers are overburdened and overworked. That’s why I have led on enforcing caps on class size and supporting high-quality tutoring in our schools. Research shows that these policies are most effective at remediation and easing teacher workload.