Talarico On Why He Decided to Run for Office

Transcripts:

so I

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was a teacher on the west side of San Antonio, which is a for those your listeners who are in San Antonio, the

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west side is this it's this beautiful historic neighborhood, Mexican-American neighborhood. It's also one of the

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poorest zip codes in the whole state of Texas. So, every day I I saw my students

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struggling to overcome poverty and and these systems that were designed to hold them back. And the school I was at was

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underfunded. It was title one school. I taught 45 kids in one classroom and the classroom was not that much bigger than

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the studio. Oh my gosh. So you may imagine 45 kids in here, you know, some I had I literally had kids sitting on

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the air conditioning unit cuz there weren't enough desks. I mean this is this is this is the 21st century

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in the United States of America. Wow. And it pissed me off. I mean I So I had one student I I was a first

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year teacher. What happens in schools, especially schools in high poverty neighborhoods where things are really

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hard, you know, the administration of the school will oftentimes give the the kids who need the most help, the kids

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who have the most troubles to the first year teachers, right? Almost like a hazing thing. So, I remember my first

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year of teaching, my principal told me that I was going to get this kid named Justin who had gotten kicked out of his

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elementary school the year before because he had brought a knife to school and threatened to stab his fifth grade

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teacher. So, I was again, first year teacher, kind of freaked out, right? The kid

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shows up. One, he's not a monster. He's an 11-year-old boy, right? Like this high, right? Um, I took him aside,

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introduced myself, told him I was happy he was in class, told him I wanted to get to know him. He gradually started to

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raise his hand a little bit more in class. He was super smart, um, super just quick. Um, he also had like a great

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smile. He's very popular with the with the girls in the class. um a lot of personality and I started to invite him

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to our little uh lunch group because I had kids who came and ate in my classroom during lunch and um and we

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started to kind of build a rapport and he didn't have a lot of of male teachers. Um so I think that was helpful

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to see a um a guy as a teacher and be able to build relationship with him. Anyway, right before winter break that

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year, he it's the last day of school. He brought me this wrapped gift. It was the

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wrapping was all janky. But I opened it up and it was this little cup with a snowflake on it that he had bought at

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the Dollar Tree for his teacher. Again, this is a kid who was going to stab his fifth grade teacher. Few months later,

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he's bringing a snowflake cup to his sixth grade teacher. And I was feeling like I was on top of the world as a

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teacher. I was like, who who's going to make the movie, right? Like here I am, right? Um

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play you in a movie. Yeah. Yeah. Who's going to play me? Um and then I came came back after winter

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break. I was in my third period class and I heard this commotion out in the hallway. So I immediately stepped out of

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the room to see what was going on and there were two of our coaches and they were both restraining Justin either side

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of him. They were carrying him out of the school. He was screaming. His feet didn't touch the ground. Like he

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literally was just carried out of the school. I found out that he had started a fight in his third grade class and

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that was his last strike and it was honest. It was the last time I ever saw Justin. I did some digging to figure out

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what had happened. Turns out in the previous semester, Justin had been seeing a therapist that was provided by

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the school district. And it was this lady that he really was hitting it off with and getting along with. And they

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were going through all his issues because Justin had been abandoned by his mother at a very early age, which

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that'll screw anybody up, right? Justin had had experienced violence, had

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experienced all this trauma. And so for the first time, there was a professional who was helping him work his way through

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it. And there was a teacher who liked him and who believed in him. And that was all it took for Justin to see all these improvements.

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And I found out that after winter break that because of budget cuts from the legislature, the district had eliminated

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the therapist. So this lifeline suddenly went away for Justin. So literally everybody had

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abandoned Justin, including his own mother. And now the adults that he was trying to trust again were abandoning

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him. And so that was the kind of radicalizing experience for me because

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these people at the state capital had cut $5 billion from our schools. Who knows why? Who knows what the

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justifications were, but I saw firsthand how that screwed up a kid's life.

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I saw the damage that did to real flesh and blood human beings. And so I

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promised myself right then that if I ever got a little bit of power or a little bit of influence that I would do

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everything I could with every fiber of my being to stop that from happening again.

So literally Justin and my students are

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the ones I think about when I'm at the capital. They are the criteria that I use to evaluate public policy. Not if

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it's a Democratic bill or Republican bill. Not if it's going to get me, you know, ex lobbyist support. It is will

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this help my students or will it hurt my students? Period. and it makes things a lot easier.