HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- Newly-elected Texas lawmakers are promising big changes to public education in Texas, but a longtime educator says real change will take time.

Jackie Anderson, a longtime public school educator and now president of the Houston Federation of Teachers, said she cannot remember another Texas election where public education played such a major role.

"It made people go, wow, maybe we need to look at it, and they started to realize how important public education is to the backbone of everything," Anderson said.