Talarico’s Classroom Claim Is Strangely Similar To Obama Story From 2012

A questionable claim repeated by Democrat Texas Senate candidate James Talarico on the campaign trail closely mirrors a story then-President Barack Obama told back in 2012. 

Talarico claims that when he began teaching, he had 45 kids in one classroom and that not all of them had desks. That story was not backed up by school records or teachers from the time, The New York Times reported Wednesday. The dubious story echoed one Obama told back in August 2012 during a campaign rally at a high school in Las Vegas, Nevada. 

“Claritssa was telling me that in the first couple of weeks of school, she might have 45 students in a class,” Obama said at the time. “They don’t have enough desks, so they’ve got some kids sitting on the floor getting assignments. Now, eventually the school district tries to work to level things out, but she says even at that point she may have 38.”

The strange similarity was pointed out by RNC research, which shared a clip on social media of the Obama rally. 

Talarico’s campaign website still tells the story of his supposedly overcrowded classroom, with students forced to sit on air conditioning units when he taught language arts at San Antonio’s Rhodes Middle School.

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“When I entered the classroom, the Texas Legislature had just gutted the public education budget by $5 billion — so I had 45 kids in one classroom. There weren’t enough desks for everyone, so some of my students sat on the air conditioning unit,” the website says. “In the richest country on the planet, I knew that was unacceptable.”

Class-size records from the time appear to show the most students ever assigned to Talarico was 30. Several teachers who taught with Talarico also had no recollection of students being forced to sit on air-conditioning units. 

San Antonio Independent School District’s Board of Trustees closed down Talarico’s school after years of poor results. 

The closure came after the school received academically unacceptable ratings three years in a row. Talarico taught at the school from 2011 to 2013 before his time as a far-Left lawmaker in the state legislature. Commenting on the school’s closure at the time, Talarico attributed blame to a so-called “systematic attack on public education” instead of its poor academic record. 

“Rhodes Middle School means a lot to me personally, and I’m heartbroken to hear it’s going to be closing,” he said. “We’re seeing schools close all over the state of Texas — in communities in every corner of the state — because there’s been a systematic attack on public education in Texas.”

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