Additional Information

Candidate Survey Responses

RESPONSES TO THE 2026 ATPE CANDIDATE SURVEY:

Please describe any specific goals or legislative initiatives you would pursue to strengthen the state’s public education system.

I think public education needs to remove social/political issues from the classroom. The public school system needs to focus on strengthening competency in STEM fields across the board. America needs more engineers in our labor pool so we can stop importing them from foreign nations. We also need to focus on bringing music programs back to schools, and offering free or low cost instruments to children in-poverished area's so they can also have the opportunity to gain the unique skills that learning an instrument brings to brain development.

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 have not done enough research on this bill to comment at this time. individual funding for school districts would need to be reviewed on a case by case basis. I cannot grant blanket funding or blank checks to any entity, as it goes against my fiscal conservative view of government.

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?

private, charter, and home schooling still need to be held to basic standards of competency for children to be given diplomas and funding. The same metrics now applied to public schools, should also be applied to these other forms of education, and parents will be able to directly evaluate the performance of all academic options.

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?

we need to offer competitive pay, and benefits to teachers to attract high quality individuals into the field. we also need to make schools, safe places again, so individuals don't feel scared to work in these environments.

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?

I would support pay raises for teachers. I haven't been able to do research into the budget and the mechanisms that support school district funding to yet have answers on how to pay for that.

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?

Yes, reducing healthcare costs for all Texans is a huge priority. this is a problem for everyone, not just teachers and will garner much attention from myself as the elected representative.

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?

yes teacher pensions should remain in place, and protections should be put in place to prevent money from these pensions being used on reckless and unsafe investments.

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?

Standardized testing has shown not to be very effective. we need to look into other means of how we can measure success in education.

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?

School choice is an important topic and it has vastly different arguments from the large city school districts to the small towns throughout Texas. Individual school boards need to have the ability to adapt their education system to the needs of their communities while maintaining basic standards of reading, writing, and core stem competency. Public schools are currently plagued by trying to keep trend with modern political issues and movements. we need to remove these distractions from public education and have education focus on critical thinking, debate, and academics.

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?

large cities need to be tasked with providing security presence with police officers around the schools during school times. if the state needs to create mechanisms to fund additional officers being hired to protect our schools, then we shall do so.

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?

the state board should only be setting the minimum standards of what's acceptable to graduate and to have that applied across the state unilaterally to all education facilities. local school districts need to have greater transparency forced upon them, and they need to be serving the local communities desires and wishes for what the education should be offering their children.

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 the individuals right to choose.

Additional Comments from Candidate on Survey

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