Overview: Angela Talarzyk, a school social worker, is running for the Trustee Area 2 seat on the Temecula Valley Unified School District (TVUSD) Board. She aims to address the mental health crisis among youth, increase representation of marginalized communities, and improve the district’s climate and culture. Talarzyk’s decision to run for the board comes from her own experience as a parent of children who attend schools within TVUSD and the ongoing challenges the district has faced. The district has faced criticism for banning critical race theory, implementing a policy that out transgender students, and firing the former superintendent.
Breanna Reeves
Over the last few years, the Temecula Valley Unified School District (TVUSD) Board has been under scrutiny following a series of events that have left two board seats vacant for months. Last December, Trustee Area 2 board member Danny Gonzalez resigned from the board just one year into his four-year term.
Following Gonzalez’s abrupt resignation, the Board conducted a process to appoint a new trustee to fill the seat which included an hours-long public interview process in February. The four TVUSD board trustees were expected to vote on the selection of a temporary appointee. Eleven candidates were interviewed, but the board could not come to a consensus regarding a selection.
Now, voters will decide who gets the seat in November.
Among the eleven candidates was Murrieta school social worker Angela Talarzyk. Talarzyk has worked in public education for 16 years and hopes to be the next board member for Trustee Area 2. Originally from Indianapolis, Indiana, Talarzyk was one of eight children and grew up living in “extreme poverty.”
Talarzyk’s decision to run for the board comes from her own experience as a parent of children who attend schools within TVUSD and the ongoing challenges the district has faced. In December 2023, residents Upneet Dhaliwal and Julie Gearyued sued TVUSD, its Board of Trustees and its president, Joseph Komrosky, “for violating their rights under the First Amendment and California law by ejecting them from school board meetings without cause,” according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Prior to this lawsuit, the district gained attention in December 2022, when the school board, with a conservative majority, banned critical race theory, and in 2023 enacted a policy that would out transgender students. In June 2023, the board fired the former superintendent, Jodi McClay, and banned a social studies textbook because it mentioned LGBTQ+ activist Harvey Milk in the supplemental material. Talarzyk’s son was one of the students in the district who felt the brunt of the banned social studies material as her son went without curriculum for three months.
In an interview with Black Voice News, Talarzyk discussed the decisions that led her to run for the TVUSD Trustee Seat 2 and what she hopes to accomplish if elected. Residents will cast their vote for this seat on November 5. Board members who hold seats in Trustee Area 1 and Trustee Area 5 are also up for reelection as their tenure ends in December. Trustee Area 4 seat also remains vacant following the recall of Komrosky in June. According to his campaign website, Komrosky intends to run for reelection for the Trustee Area 4 seat.
This interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness.
BVN: What led you to make the decision to run for TVUSD School Board (in Trustee Area 2)?
Talarzyk: What led me to run for school board [was] advocacy and just paying attention to policies and legislation. I just understand the importance of that as a social worker, but what really got me to throw my name in the hat for this position is I saw firsthand how TVUSD and some of the policies that they were implementing was impacting my own children.
My son was a fourth grade student last year and basically, he didn’t have a social studies curriculum for three months. And the reason that he didn’t have a social studies curriculum for three months is because Harvey Milk, a gay rights activist, was in some supplemental materials, and so our current school board basically couldn’t agree on the curriculum and to get it approved, the teachers had a committee.
They went through the whole process, the checks and balances that they utilize to get curriculum approved. Parents were able to weigh in on that. It should have been processed, but the board decided that they weren’t going to implement the curriculum. So, my son basically didn’t have a curriculum for three months. [T]hat was a real wake up call for me that I really need to be paying attention to what’s going on. [I was also motivated to run after] seeing how much money the school district was spending on lawsuits and litigation and just implementing policies that really weren’t benefiting students, teachers, classrooms.
BVN: What are three issues you identify as a priority for the district?
Talarzyk: I definitely think that we need to be dealing with the mental health crisis with our youth. That is a big priority for me. I do feel that we need to be implementing more social-emotional learning and evidence-based curriculum for our students. Students need to be learning those soft skills. They need to be learning cooperation. They need to be learning teamwork, conflict resolution, stress management, anger management, just life skills because when they leave our schools, they have to go out into the real world. I think that is really important, and I think that’s critical in regards to prevention. But, I also think it’s critical in regards to just ensuring that our students have strong mental health skills just to be able to navigate life.
I also believe we have got to be hiring more mental health staff. We have to be hiring more social workers and more counselors. When you look at the ratio of students to those mental health providers [they] were really way outside of the recommendations. I work at a high school. We have two social workers. We have eight counselors. They do a lot of great work with academics, and we really focus on the mental health piece. But when you have a high school that has 3,400 students, do we have enough mental health staff? A lot of the money that we’re spending and wasting could be going to that purpose.
The other thing that’s really a priority for me is I think that we need to have more professional development, and we need to have more help with technology. [With] technology every day it’s something new and it’s evolving. I do think that that’s a big root [cause] of why our kids are having anxiety and depression and mental health issues. If I was to get the seat on the TVUSD school board, I would really want to see a focus on: what are we doing in regards to technology? How are we teaching students digital citizenship and how to be safe on social media? I think with AI [artificial intelligence] and how that’s really evolving, we need to be looking at policies and legislation in regards to AI.
I would also want to focus on what TVUSD is doing to recruit teachers, but then, also keeping the teachers that we have. I think it’s important that students see themselves represented in the classroom.
Some of the policies that have been implemented have affected the community in a negative way. I think it’s affected the climate and the culture within TVUSD in a negative way. I think that certainly doesn’t help to keep teachers and staff.
BVN: If elected, what would you do differently from the previous Trustee Area 2 representative?
Talarzyk: One of the things that I would definitely do differently is, I think that everyone needs to have a seat at the table. Everyone needs to be able to share their ideas. For me, first and foremost, it would really be important for me to build and establish trust among all stakeholders. [I would] build trust within the board, but then also with parents and with the community.
I think that we have an issue right now where we don’t have trust, we don’t have transparency, we don’t have an environment where people feel safe to speak up. I’ve been having lots of meetings with marginalized communities, and one of the things that I’ve noticed is sometimes even with public comment, we don’t have diversity. I want to create an environment where people feel safe to speak up.
I’ve been meeting with some mothers in the community. They’ve been sharing how some of these policies have really negatively impacted their families and their children. I met with some Black mothers, and they shared with me that they feel like with the [critical race theory] policy, they feel like they’ve seen an increase in racism. They feel like they’ve seen an increase in targeting, and their children being targeted. Those are the things that I don’t think are good.
Part of the attitude I want to have as a board member is, ‘let’s just name it to tame it’. Let’s be honest about what’s really going on. Let’s not brush it under the rug. Let’s be transparent and let’s address it.