Additional Information

Running for Texas House District 63 in the 2026 Democratic primary election. Previously ran unsuccessfully for the same House seat in the 2024 Democratic primary election and the 2022 general election.

Candidate Survey Responses

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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.

Legislative Priorities:  increased FAIR funding to meet inflationary cost increases over the past 10 years to K-12 districts, improving educator training and retention incentives, increased special education funding, establishing 1-2 years of free community college for certification or Associate's Degree, and repealing the ESA bill.

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?

Public school districts should receive additional UNALLOCATED funding that allows each district to decide their own priorities instead of being hamstrung by legislators' priorities.  Educators should decide how funding should be spent, not legislators with vested interests and agendas.  The state can pay for the increased funding through repealing the ESA bill, which would rightfully restore up to $1 billion to public school coffers, along with using the "Rainy Day Surplus" resource.

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?

ESA's, regardless of how much lawmakers say they are to help those who are disabled or impoverished (the two top tiers in the bucket), will not help those populations, as the cost of private schools far exceeds the voucher amount and vulnerable populations do not have the additional money.  Therefore, once again, Texas state resources will devolve to the  wealthiest.  Accountability for those private schools who receive the vouchers should be the same as for pubic schools--accountability assessments, accredited curricula, adherence to special education/disabilities laws, yearly and random auditing of the use of the money, and separation of church and state (as should be done in Texas but isn't).

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?

Recruitment/retention of high-quality educators is directly related to several factors: fairness of compensation, perceived value of and respect for the profession in the community and state, and favorability of the workplace with regard to autonomy and educational choices.  To keep teachers and attract people to the profession, each of these areas need to be addressed.

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?

The 89th legislature should have provided across-the-board raises to all employees in public education, but then could have targeted the tiers for retention to where there are the most staffing shortages.  Raises should be directly tied to inflation each year, while "merit" raises can also be instituted to reward staff initiative.

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 fail to provide adequately for the pensions and healthcare of retired educators is reprehensible.  Specific legislation to increase this funding should be tied to the general index of inflation for pensions and to the inflationary rate for healthcare costs for medical coverage.

7. Retirement Security:

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?

The TRS should remain a defined-benefit pension plan for members so that the State as the employer bears the risk, not the pensioners.  Further, educators who have also contributed pre-tax dollars to Social Security should also receive that retirement amount, not just the TRS, which I believe is now law in Texas and should be maintained.

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 am in agreement with the Texas Through-Year Assessment program, as this is more immediate feedback on a regular basis so that individual learning needs can be addressed.  The summative model of assessment, as in end of year accountability tests, puts extreme pressure on students and educators alike for that one testing session.  Further, I have never thought that grading schools or educators based on test results was fair.  For example, as a psychologist, I know that achievement and performance are closely correlated with socioeconomic levels; therefore, students in impoverished areas will usually score lower as a group, but the efforts of students and teachers may be on a par with or exceed that of those in well-resourced suburbs.

9. Parental Rights and Community Voice:

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?

The "parental rights" legislation is a thinly-veiled attempt by Christian nationalists or others with vested interests to seize control of materials and programming in schools.  Parents have always had the right to opt their children out of books, programs, and curricula that are discrepant from their personal beliefs--this practice is sufficient and we don't need the myriad of such restrictive laws that hamper educators.

10. School Safety:

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?

If the State had given a general allotment increase, then those districts who cannot adequately fund the safety requirements could use the money as needed in their districts.

11. Curriculum and Local Control:

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?

While I believe that it is fair to hold districts accountable for meeting TEKS standards of knowledge, it should be up to local districts to select their curricula and library books.

12. Educator Rights and Professional Associations:

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?

Absolutely it is appropriate to allow membership dues to be deducted from paychecks.  This ease and efficiency will allow more educators to be members.  To decrease accessibility that limits members is tantamount to reducing the power of the organizations to advocate for the professions, in much the same way that limiting access to unions reduces the power of workers over their incomes and working conditions.

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RESPONSES TO THE 2024 ATPE CANDIDATE SURVEY:

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

Providing a world-class education in Texas must begin with amply funding public education (currently 45th in per capita spending) and denying vouchers for private schools. Public education is supposed to be the great equalizer of opportunity, so that not just the rich and elite can advance their education and income potential. Secondly, educators should be the ones to select curricula and book choices, not narrow special interests groups whose agenda is to limit educational knowledge. Thirdly, we need to make teaching approaches applicable to diverse learners to increase their motivation to excel or finish school. Further, we should not rely so heavily on state accountability testing (for multiple reasons) and add in alternative outcome measures and markers. Finally, as community college is an extension of public education, we should also increase the affordability of community college to give more opportunities to those who are disadvantaged. The other issue with community colleges and state universities is the order to disband DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) departments, which will severely limit the professors and students who choose to come here, thereby leading to lower quality of education. We must re-establish DEI programs in colleges and universities to attract those who will make us world class in teaching and research.

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 vouchers of any type should be passed in the Legislature of Texas. In general, it takes away money from public education even though Republican spinners of the truth say it won't. As noted above, public school grants opportunity to all, not just the rich. But, even for my clients with special needs, such as Autism, the vouchers would cover only 1/4 to 1/3 of the cost of the private specialized schools. I know what those schools cost per year, and the majority of my clients and other families in the state do not have the other 2/3 to 3/4 of the cost. It should also be noted that private schools have no accountability for the quality of their education or oversight of their finances. What if some of these schools simply inflated their prices after receipt of the voucher money? We have no way to monitor their use of public funds. Further, outcome studies on academic achievement show little significant difference in attainment when comparing public to most private schools. The final concern with ESAs for private schools is that some of these schools are religious, which contradicts the Constitutional guideline of separation of church and state.

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?

Mandates for public education provisions must be accounted for in the later appropriations bill rather than letting the burden fall on homeowners via property taxes or on the school districts themselves. Monitoring of the potential cost of “unfunded mandates” will need to be done continuously, and then later clearly linked to provisions to pay for them in appropriations bills. Yes, it is a priority to harden schools with safety measures, but these must be paid for by the state, not districts that already have budget shortfalls.

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?

Texas is already in the bottom ten states in per-student spending on necessary costs, spending about $4000 per student below the average of states. So, not only do we have to meet the currently increased costs due to inflation, but we have to make up the discrepancy between us and most other states in per-student expenditure. If we were putting the right amount of value on our children’s education, we would not have been so low in educational dollars. We place down the list with poor states, not where we should be as the 2nd-best economy in the country and the 9th-best in the world! The answer, though, is not to increase property owner taxes or implement an income tax. In my opinion, we need to readjust the state budget so more emphasis is placed on funding schools—reapportionment of the budget. Further, there is a surplus in the budget for the coming year, so part of the “Rainy Day” account can be used to increase our educational dollars. As part of the increased funding, we need to increase the basic allotment, and certainly increase the extra allotment needed to adequately educate special education and economically disadvantaged students.

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?

Of course educator and staff salaries and benefits, including for retirees, need to increase, as Texas is woefully below most states in pay. It is just as large a concern, though, that educators are not respected and valued as professionals by high-ranking members of the Texas State Government, as when Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick wrote several years ago that the public schools were like “a babysitting service.” Further, politicians and some parents don’t trust educators to choose curricula content or school librarians to choose books without putting it all through a hard-core fundamental religious sieve that is politically advantageous for these politicians to support. Not many people will want to work long hours for comparatively low pay while fearing unsafe work conditions and enduring a lack of appreciation and respect for their efforts! In addition to improving salary and benefits, uncertified teachers could have provisional status and be given an appropriate amount of time to obtain certification, which should be paid for in budget allotments from the state.

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?

I firmly support a state-funded across-the-board pay raise for all employees in public education. It is tragic and ridiculous that the governor of Texas reneged on his word about using surplus money for public schools, adding insult to injury when he then hijacked the funding by tying it to passing his pet agenda of vouchers. Sponsoring and passing legislation to increase educator pay and benefits would certainly be a priority for me and it should be in a stand-alone bill. But, we also must mount a public awareness campaign to counteract the devaluation many people have toward educators in the state of Texas, as it will be crucial to obtain public support for legislative actions to better support school districts’ attraction and retention of teachers.

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?

Not only have the premiums for health insurance risen steeply, reducing take-home pay for educators, but the plan benefits are reduced so that out-of-pocket expenses have increased and the number of covered services have been reduced. Thus, educators are paying much more for fewer benefits. The state needs to negotiate a "better deal" for public education employees, with lower premiums and deductibles, subsidized by the state budget. It benefits the state economy if we help educators turn out more qualified students who go on to higher education, vocational careers, and productive jobs. This would be a good investment in retaining teachers and reducing their financial stress and worry about healthcare so they can focus more on teaching.

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.?

Accountability is of course necessary to ensure we are delivering educational services that increase learning in students. However, the arbitrary A-F system is based on quantitative measures only (i.e., student test scores), and perhaps not even all the important indicators of educational success. Test scores, graduation rates, and achieving a year’s worth of academic gain in a calendar year—all of these measures apply to average and above students who have no learning differences, psychiatric or developmental disorders, chronic medical problems, ESL status, or socioeconomic disadvantages. No school should be penalized by this A-F classification if they serve a more atypical population who CANNOT achieve at the same level as typical students. Furthermore, using only quantifiable measures for accountability overlooks the vast importance of schools as a haven for socioemotional development, and for some children, basic needs, such as food security and safety from violence. Quality of life variables, while more difficult to ascertain, are every bit as important as test scores and numbers. Finally, if the A-F accountability system is used to compare public and private schools, it is an unfair comparison. After all, socioeconomic status is highly correlated with educational attainment; therefore, the children of educated parents with wealth are the only ones who can afford to go to private schools. As these children are advantaged in a myriad of ways, they may have higher achievement levels as a group while they are in secondary education. If so, their higher achievement does NOT mean public schools are doing an inadequate job.

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?

This question of balancing accommodations for the few, while providing an optimal education for the many is interesting. It could be relevant to the issue of right-wing splinter groups trying to ban books, whitewash history books, disallow sex education, and denigrate the LGBTQ population or minorities--this is an improper use of accommodation that actually harms the educational environment. Those parents or students that disagree can voice it and receive alternatives or permission to not participate. However, accommodating individuals with disabilities is, of course, appropriate and lawful, which hopefully will promote inclusivity and acceptance within the wider educational community.

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?

Educators who have already not received adequate pay will not have been able to save much in alternative accounts. Therefore, the TRS should continue to be a traditional defined-benefit plan for now and the future. These retirees need to be able to count on a steady income and not worry about the vagaries of the stock market and their funds.

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?

Public employees should retain the right to join professional associations and have the convenience of automatic deduction of dues from their paychecks. If the current Texas government is proposing this change, it can only mean they want to make it harder (like voter suppression tactics) for educators to band together in unions or associations to advocate for the rights of educators. By no means would it be democratic and fair to remove the ease of joining educator associations.
 

Additional Comments from Candidate on Survey

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COMMENTS SUBMITTED IN RESPONSE TO THE 2026 ATPE CANDIDATE SURVEY:

Not only am I a licensed psychologist who specializes in children and young adults with disabilities, but my daughter is a special education teacher in Texas in Lewisville ISD and I was an adjunct professor of Psychology at the local community college for 7 years. Public education is the great equalizer of opportunity for people, which not only helps the quality and quantity of people's lives, but grows the economy. Therefore, fair funding for public education is a pillar of my candidacy for TX House District 63.

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COMMENTS SUBMITTED IN RESPONSE TO THE 2024 ATPE CANDIDATE SURVEY:

As a licensed psychologist who works with individuals with developmental disorders, such as Autism, ADHD, and learning challenges, I collaborate extensively with public school districts. Further, as an adjunct community college professor (North Central Texas College), I am part of the public education system myself. I believe in public education and will be a staunch ally if I am so fortunate as to be elected to the Texas House of Representatives.