Adrian Reyna’s childhood is marked by memories of running around the halls of Brewer Elementary School where his mother was principal during the 1990s.
Decades later, Brewer Elementary is now called Brewer Academy and sits closed on the West Side of San Antonio, and Reyna is a master teacher at San Antonio Independent School District, working in a grant-funded position meant to strengthen teaching pipelines.
As of Tuesday night, however, Reyna appears to be on his way to a seat in the State House of Representatives to represent Texas House District 125, a district his father Arthur “Art” Reyna represented from 1997-2001.
He finished first in Democrats’ primary to succeed retiring state Rep. Ray Lopez (D-San Antonio) in the primary race in March, and this week, beat Michelle Barrientes Vela, a former Bexar County constable, in a runoff.
Reyna took over 80.13% of the vote to Barrientes Vela’s 19.87%.
In November’s general election, Reyna will go up against Republican candidate Ricardo Martinez, who won his primary outright in March. But Reyna enters that race heavily favored, in a Westside district that’s reliably blue.
The move would make him one of the only public school educators — and one of an even smaller number of union members — to ever make it to the famously business-friendly Texas Legislature.
According to the AFL-CIO, which supported Reyna, the Texas Senate just added its first ever rank-and-file union member this year, when Democrat Taylor Rehmet won an unlikely special election near Fort Worth.
“Seeing the room full of people, the broad coalition that we’ve built, the number of supporters that have come out… I think it’s because we continually gave people something to vote for as opposed to something to vote against” he said during an election night party at Sari Sari, a Filipino restaurant in his district.
‘Lived experience’ in Texas education wars
House District 125 is a strong Democratic hold on the Westside of San Antonio. If Reyna wins against Martinez, a commercial lighting contractor, he would likely be the only representative with current experience in public education.
Reyna had the support of a massive coalition of organized labor groups, and the entire Bexar County Democratic legislative delegation, a rare feat.
“To have them all come together, even though they don’t always agree on anything else,” was a point of pride for Reyna, he said. “We’ve even heard the joke that the delegation doesn’t even agree on lunch, but they’ve managed to come together to support.”
Reyna’s runoff election party was visited by several local leaders, including city council members Ric Galvan, Ivalis Meza Gonzales and Marina Alderete-Gavito.
The delegation includes state Rep. Diego Bernal (D-San Antonio), a veteran legislator who holds the powerful vice chair position on the Texas House Committee on Public Education.
Bernal said he’s looking forward to Reyna bringing “lived experience” to the Texas Capitol, a place Bernal says is full of elected officials who don’t understand public education.
“He has the sort of… moral authority to speak on these things in a way that most, most policymakers, including myself, don’t have,” Bernal said during a May 14 interview. “I’m excited about having a grown-up in the room.”
Not only does the legislature lack teachers, Texas’ GOP leader also spent millions rooting out some of their party’s biggest public education supporters in 2024, to pave the way for the state’s first ever school voucher program.
Committee appointments are made by the House Speaker and are largely based on seniority, as well as relationships with GOP leaders. As a freshman, Reyna would have none of those.
But in light of the state’s major changes to education policy, this year two of Democrats’ biggest names launched political careers based on their experience with that issue in the legislature: state Rep. Gina Hinojosa (D-Austin), who is runnings for governor and state Rep. James Talarico (D-Austin), who is breaking fundraising records for his U.S. Senate bid.
Reyna said working as a teacher has given him a “human” approach to policy work, since he has lived experience of teaching and has worked alongside labor activists for years.
“You get to see all of the parts of life when you’re a teacher,” Reyna said in a pre-election night interview. “That’s part of what I’m very interested and excited to bring to the Capitol.”
Education on the menu
Kicking off in January, the 90th Texas Legislative Session is expected to focus on education policy as public schools deal with tighter budgets, historic dwindling enrollment, the first year of school vouchers and the fallout of education laws passed during the previous session.
A U.S. history teacher by trade who’s engaged to a school counselor, Reyna has seen firsthand how state mandates take effect in the classroom. He often cites one of his fiancee’s stories, where a long-time mariachi teacher suddenly died from cancer and she wasn’t allowed to talk to students about it.
This was because of Senate Bill 12, a massive “parents’ rights” education bill passed during the 89th Legislative Session that, among many things, requires parents to sign off on individual school-based health services.
Implementation of the bill was rocky. School counselors and nurses reported not knowing what they could or couldn’t do for students, and some parents were confused by the consent forms which school districts had to quickly come up with at the start of the 2025-26 school year.
“I understand the logic and the reasoning behind consent for many things in the education world,” but the policy was a misguided attempt by lawmakers who don’t understand what happens when “rubber meets the road,” Reyna said.
“There is trauma that happens, and the response that the school was able to provide for that trauma was hamstrung by a policy like this.”
Shaped by his family’s teaching tradition and his own experience in the classroom, Reyna’s campaign is shaped by a staunch support of public education.
San Antonio’s education landscape is unique in that it has over a dozen public school districts, plus a growing number of charter schools and private schools that could soon be gaining students under the state’s new education savings accounts.
Reyna himself attended a private Catholic school between kindergarten and eighth grade, and graduated from a magnet high school in Northside ISD.
As families increasingly look for flexible school options, school choice advocates say having several options breeds innovation and meets individual needs. But traditional public school advocates feel it creates an unbalanced system where charters and private schools can follow a different set of rules.
Any policy that diverts funding from public schools, Reyna called a “non-starter.
“School choice to me isn’t a real choice until you have fully funded, high-quality neighborhood public schools in every neighborhood. If we have that, then talk to me about alternative options.
Not a ‘one trick pony’
Outside his regular day job at SAISD and being a father of three, Reyna is vice president of the San Antonio Alliance, a union for district teachers and staff, sits on the board for San Antonio’s AFL-CIO Central Labor Council and the board of VIA Metropolitan Transit.
Even though the teacher’s union and SAISD’s administration have often butted heads, district Superintendent Jaime Aquino was present at Reyna’s election night party as a private supporter.
Aquino, who will retire from SAISD in January, said he’s personally excited about having a teacher in Austin.
In 2023, Reyna was part of pushing the City of San Antonio to pass an ordinance requiring contractors who work on city-funded projects to provide shade, water and breaks for workers exposed to extreme summer heat.
State leaders soon came down on municipalities that passed similar policies with Senate Bill 2127, which aims to prevent local governments from making rules beyond what the state already specifies on labor-related issues.
“Talk about some other things to repeal, along with school vouchers: right to work… preemption,” Reyna said. “Last couple years ago we won in the city… did a whole press conference on the front steps of City Hall, only to have Governor Abbott and the state come in and preempt us and say, ‘You can’t do that’.”
Labor and teacher groups across Texas are celebrating Reyna’s primary win.
“Adrian will be one of the first rank-and-file union members from San Antonio to ever serve in the Texas House, and he’s ready to fight for all workers on day one,” said Texas AFL-CIO President Leonard Aguilar. The group represents teachers, communications workers, transportation workers and other laborers.
“There’s no one better to fight for Texas educators than an educator himself,” said Zech Capo, president of the Texas American Federation of Teachers. “We are excited to continue that work in the halls of the Texas Capitol.”
There are perhaps two people who are the most proud of the large coalition supporting Reyna: mom and dad.
“I’m embarrassed he didn’t get 90%,” Reyna’s father joked about the voting results. “He talked from a young age about running for something, but he never talked about running for this. This whole campaign is about lifting people up with him, you know. He stands on the shoulders of so many people who worked to make this happen.”
Sylvia Reyna, an educator of over 30 years, described her son as “unapologetic about defending the kid that was being bullied.”
“My career has always been about service. His career has all been about service, and for him to get to this height is just a dream come true for us,” she said during an interview at her son’s election night party.
In the legislature, Reyna would face a Democratic Party that’s been down and out for some time now. Even with all of their members in lock-step, they couldn’t stop a school voucher program or redistricting.
While the political landscape has changed in the last 30 years, Reyna’s father said his son’s fight will be much the same as his.
“The work is the same,” he said, reflecting on his time in office in the late 1990s. “You still talk to all the people, or as many people as you can, to try to make something good happen. That’s your job, and you’re not going to win them all, but you don’t lose them all either.”
Reyna embraces being pigeonholed as the “education guy” and the “labor buy.”
“Who cares?” he said. “When have we ever had a public education candidate with the background from our public schools be in a position like that?”
