Ahead of the November general election, the Southern California News Group compiled a list of questions to pose to the candidates who wish to represent you. You can find the full questionnaire below. Questionnaires may have been edited for spelling, grammar, length and, in some instances, to remove hate speech and offensive language.
MORE: Read all the candidate responses in our Voter Guide
Name: Angela Talarzyk
Current job title: Mental health specialist/school social worker
Incumbent: No
Other political positions held: None
City where you reside: Temecula
Campaign website or social media: Angela4tvusd.com, instagram.com/angela4tvusd
How can the school district best meet the needs of all students, including those learning English, those who need mental health service, those in special education programs and those from low-income backgrounds?
As a school social worker, this question speaks directly to me, my background and my priorities. Schools are seeing increased rates of depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions with students, and our data shows many students struggling and falling between the cracks. We need to have comprehensive mental health and SEL initiatives and evidence-based curriculum in place to help support our students and teachers.
To achieve this I would want to look at the student-to-social worker ratio and hire more licensed mental health providers, behavior specialists, and SEL staff to better support our students, teachers, parents and classrooms. Prevention and early intervention are key, and by being proactive we can improve behaviors, raise academic scores, decrease bullying and absentee rates and keep our children from making poor choices.
It is also important to have a multi-tiered system of support and provide wraparound services, targeted instruction, counseling, and behavioral interventions for our high-need students, and continuously monitor the data to determine if these interventions are closing the gaps and impacting student outcomes positively.
Some school districts have adopted transgender notification policies to notify parents if a student says they are transgender. If your district has such a policy, do you support or oppose it? Why? If yours does not, would you support or oppose such rules? Why?
I am outspoken in my opposition to transgender notification policies like the one passed here in Temecula. My reasons for this stem from my own education and research, as well as my direct experience working with students.
As a school social worker, I probably have the most experience working directly with students who have been affected by these policies, and I have seen the damage they do to those communities. Students deserve the autonomy and freedom to tell their own story at the pace they need to tell it. These students are experiencing extreme social and emotional hardship and struggle, and in the vast majority of cases where a student approaches a school staff member, they are looking for help in telling that story. Forcing children to have these conversations when they are not prepared only leads to increased distress. Student safety is my No. 1 priority, and if a policy causes a single student to have an increased risk of hurting themselves or suicide it needs to be rescinded immediately.
What is the biggest issue the school district faces, and how would you address it?
There are a lot of issues being faced by our school district from teacher retention to budgets, from mental health to academic performance, and from chronic absenteeism to extremism. We need to address multiple issues and quickly. However, if I had to point out the single biggest issue facing our school district I would say its complacency.
When you look at the past two years of divisiveness and national news coverage of our school board, it is easy to point fingers and talk about how the previous board majority was bad. The problem that no one wants to address is that we did not get here overnight. The issues in our schools didn’t start in 2022. However, we have a large contingent of people who will say they want to “”go back to when school board was boring.”” Meaning they don’t want to make waves or talk about sensitive topics. They just want it to be easy. This is a privileged position, and it is one we cannot fall victim to again. We can not go back.
The only way to move forward is to recognize the issues in our schools, have the uncomfortable conversations, and address the mess. I encourage all people to speak at board meetings so we can have a diverse set of voices.
Why would you make a good leader, and how would you represent the diverse communities within the school district?
Being a good leader means being a good listener. You have to understand that you are only one person, and other people have completely different lived experiences that may even contradict your own personal worldview. You must have empathy. Luckily, listening and having empathy are a main part of my job.
You also need to do the work. Being a leader means you take ownership and responsibility for the team, the organization and the issues being faced.
When it comes to leadership, it is common for people to talk about compromise or building bridges. That only works when both parties are reasonable and working toward a common goal. There is no middle ground with extremists or policies that put students in danger. Period.
The landscape of education has changed drastically. Students, behaviors, teacher expectations, politics, mental health and technology are wildly different now than they were even five or 10 years ago. As the only candidate who is not retired and has worked in public education, with students, every single day for the past 16 years, I believe I have the best understanding of the issues our students, teachers, and parents are facing today.
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