Texas Democrat Senate nominee James Talarico has repeatedly claimed he taught 45 students in a crowded single classroom without enough desks, but buried nine paragraphs down in a profile on Talarico’s experience as a teacher, The New York Times cited school records showing the largest class period assigned to the former middle school teacher had just 30 students.
Talarico often invokes his two years teaching sixth-grade English at a low-income San Antonio middle school, an experience he frequently uses to argue that he understands the challenges facing public schools. The Times published a lengthy profile on Wednesday focused on Talarico’s short stint as teacher at Rhodes Middle School, and the writers spent just a few paragraphs on Talarico’s fib about the classroom size.
“At one point, I had 45 students in one classroom,” Talarico said during a CNN town hall earlier this month. He added that students had to sit on the air-conditioning unit because there were not enough desks, calling the situation an indictment of education in “the wealthiest country in human history.”
Talarico has repeated the anecdote at campaign events and featured it on his campaign website. Texas Education Agency documents reviewed by the Times, however, indicate that the largest class period he taught at Rhodes Middle School had 30 students, while most of his classes ranged from 22 to 27.
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His campaign did not dispute the class-size records. Spokesman JT Ennis said Talarico had worked with school administrators to reduce class sizes after 45 students were initially placed in his classroom.
“After having 45 students placed in his classroom, James worked with school administrators to redistribute students across classes and create the learning environment that his students deserved,” Ennis told the Times.
The Times also interviewed former students and colleagues, who recalled classrooms in which desks were occupied but did not remember the extreme overcrowding Talarico has described. One former seventh-grade English teacher, Geraldine Uriegas, said some classes at Rhodes could reach 45 students and that students sometimes sat on old-fashioned heaters. She could not recall the size of Talarico’s own classes.
Talarico, who was 22 when he began teaching at Rhodes through Teach for America in 2011, spent two years at the school before attending Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. He later entered politics, winning election to the Texas House in 2018 and building a public profile through his advocacy for public-school funding and opposition to Republican-backed school choice policies.
The new revelation is not the first time Talarico’s teaching background has been distorted. In September, Talarico ran a Spanish language campaign ad where former students praised the candidate in an expensive private school. While Rhodes was shut down last year, the ad was filmed at Keystone School, a successful private school that can cost over $27,000 per year of high school.
His classroom experience has become a major part of his pitch to voters. Talarico has argued that witnessing the consequences of state education cuts firsthand helped inspire his political career and shaped his views on school funding.
But the limits of that experience have drawn scrutiny before. In January, Republican state Rep. Carl Tepper questioned whether Talarico’s two years in the classroom qualified him to present himself as an education expert.
“I would never claim to be an expert in national security because of my six years in the Air Force, just as he should never claim to be an expert in education because of two years in the classroom,” Tepper told the Texas Tribune.
The new reporting comes as Talarico campaigns against Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton in a closely watched Texas Senate race that could determine control of the chamber.
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