Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Talarico has proposed a sweeping education plan that is inspired by his time as a public school teacher in one of San Antonio’s poorest districts. 

Talarico was placed at Rhodes Middle School by national education nonprofit Teach for America, beginning his tenure in 2011. He says that seeing firsthand the impact that state budget cuts had on schools: large class sizes that had 45 students in one classroom, students’ needs not being met, and teachers having to pay for things students needed out of their own pockets, was what compelled him to run for the state legislature in 2018. 

During his Senate campaign, Talarico has told the story of Justin, a student he had during his first year of teaching, who had behavioral problems and had threatened a fifth-grade teacher with a knife. “He’s not a monster, he’s an 11-year-old boy,” Talarico says in an interview posted to his YouTube channel.

He built a rapport with Justin, and was seeing him raise his hand in class and participate in a lunch group, and the student gave him a cup from Dollar Tree as a Christmas gift. But after winter break, Justin got into a fight and was removed from the school. Talarico learned that Justin had been seeing a district-provided therapist. 

“And I found out that after winter break, that because of budget cuts from the legislature, the district had eliminated the therapist,” Talarico said in the interview. “So this lifeline suddenly went away for Justin.”

The education plan Talarico details on his campaign page calls for prioritizing student health, which includes expanding the National School Lunch and School Breakfast programs, and adding more counselors “to ensure kids have the mental health resources and other support they need in school.”

During his tenure in the Texas legislature, Talarico was on the House Public Education Committee, working on initiatives to boost teacher pay, and improve early childhood education programs. 

Both of those ideas feature prominently in his campaign education plan as well. He wants to expand programs that fund and enhance teacher training, establish universal pre-K for all 3- and 4-year-olds, and invest in child care for children under 3. Talarico also calls for protecting Head Start, the early childhood education program for low-income children that the Trump administration has proposed gutting and overhauling.

Talarico’s record also includes unsuccessfully fighting Gov. Greg Abbott’s school voucher plan, calling it “welfare for the wealthy.” Under the plan, parents receive taxpayer funds to spend on private and religious schools, which Talarico and other Democrats argued would siphon the amount of money available to Texas public schools. 

The measure passed along party lines and Abbott signed it into law in 2025. A new report from two nonpartisan watchdog groups estimates the program could cost Texas public schools nearly $300 million in 2026. 

Talarico says in his education plan he would “reject the voucher scams being pushed by billionaire mega-donors that defund public schools to subsidize private education for the wealthiest Americans.”

During a campaign stop at Rhodes in February alongside former students, Talarico said all the warnings about the money going to affluent families at the expense of poorer ones were coming true.

The same billionaires who supported the Texas initiative are now pushing a similar school voucher proposal at the federal level, Talarico added. 

“They’re gutting the Department of Education, and they’re attacking our students and our teachers in our nation’s capital,” he said. “And it’s why we need an experienced fighter for public education in the halls of power in Washington, D.C.”

(Photo: James Talarico, via James Talarico TX Facebook)