Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Talarico is facing scrutiny on the campaign trail over claims regarding his past experience as a middle school teacher that closely mirror an anecdote shared by former President Barack Obama more than a decade ago.
Talarico has repeatedly stated on the campaign trail that when he began teaching, he had 45 students in a single classroom and that not all of the children had desks. His official campaign website continues to feature this narrative, specifying that while he taught language arts at Rhodes Middle School in San Antonio, students were forced to sit on air conditioning units due to a lack of furniture. The website attributes the situation to a $5 billion reduction in the public education budget by the Texas Legislature prior to his arrival.
However, records and colleagues from that period present a different picture. Class-size records from the San Antonio Independent School District indicate that the highest number of students ever assigned to Talarico was 30. Furthermore, several educators who taught alongside him at the school stated they had no recollection of students sitting on air conditioning units.
The narrative shared by Talarico bears a striking resemblance to remarks made by Barack Obama during an August 2012 campaign rally at a high school in Las Vegas, Nevada. At that event, Obama recounted a story about a teacher named Clarissa who supposedly dealt with 45 students in the first weeks of school and lacked enough desks to keep students off the floor. The parallel between the two accounts was highlighted by Republican National Committee research, which distributed archival video footage of the Las Vegas rally on social media.
Talarico taught language arts at Rhodes Middle School from 2011 to 2013 before launching his career in the Texas Legislature. The educational facility itself was eventually shuttered by the San Antonio Independent School District Board of Trustees following a prolonged period of poor academic performance, which included receiving academically unacceptable ratings for three consecutive years.
When the campus closure was announced, Talarico disputed the connection to the school’s academic evaluations, instead blaming the shutdown on what he termed a systematic attack on public education across the state of Texas. While the campus is now closed, the debate surrounding his early teaching accounts continues to draw attention as his legislative campaign progresses.
