Urenda Busted in a Lie?
Jesus Urenda, who is in a run-off election to save his JP seat on the Eastside appears to be lying about a key accomplishment he's been hanging his hat on.
As you can see in this screenshot from a campaign video he recently released, Urenda is stubbornly claiming a win on a reduction in truancy cases despite the fact that his opponent Rebeca Bustamante repeatedly calls him out on it.
To be clear, there has been a drastic reduction in truancy in his court over the last four years. But there has been a drastic reduction in EVERY JP court across the state of Texas over that time period because the Texas Legislature changed the law.
The law was changed by the 84th Legislature about 4 years ago, resulting in an overall reduction across the state of Texas, not just El Paso. The total number of truancy cases filed in Texas was 20,555 in school year 2015-2016.
Significantly reduced from 88,576 the previous school year.
If you wanna see the facts for yourself, the stats I'm citing come from a report in 2017 from the Legislative Budget Board titled Overview of the Effects of Changes to Texas Truancy Laws.
Click here to read the entire report.
So it was the Texas Legislature that reduced truancy, Jesus Urenda had absolutely nothing to do with it.
Now I can't tell you why Urenda is stubbornly sticking to the claim that he reduced truancy when he very clearly hasn't. But you can't go around saying you did something that you very clearly didn't and not expect to get called out on it.
Sources in the county justice system indicate that Urenda didn't even hear truancy cases the first year he was in office because they didn't know how to deal with them.
But documents released by his opponent Rebeca Bustamante indicate that Urenda has a hard time substantiating the claim that he has reduced truancy. Bustamante apparently did an open records request that came back yesterday. She requested "...statistics of Truancy referrals to the Justice of the Peace Precinct 4 from 2014 to present."
The letter from SISD indicated "...no records of the information requested were found..."
According to officials at Ysleta Independent School District there were ZERO cases referred to JP courts last year for truancy.
So the official word from the only two school districts in his precinct is that they haven't sent truancy cases to his court.
That begs the question, if they sent no cases to his court, how can his claims of reducing truancy be even remotely seen as true?
Simple.
They aren't.
As you can see in this screenshot from a campaign video he recently released, Urenda is stubbornly claiming a win on a reduction in truancy cases despite the fact that his opponent Rebeca Bustamante repeatedly calls him out on it.
To be clear, there has been a drastic reduction in truancy in his court over the last four years. But there has been a drastic reduction in EVERY JP court across the state of Texas over that time period because the Texas Legislature changed the law.
The law was changed by the 84th Legislature about 4 years ago, resulting in an overall reduction across the state of Texas, not just El Paso. The total number of truancy cases filed in Texas was 20,555 in school year 2015-2016.
Significantly reduced from 88,576 the previous school year.
If you wanna see the facts for yourself, the stats I'm citing come from a report in 2017 from the Legislative Budget Board titled Overview of the Effects of Changes to Texas Truancy Laws.
Click here to read the entire report.
So it was the Texas Legislature that reduced truancy, Jesus Urenda had absolutely nothing to do with it.
Now I can't tell you why Urenda is stubbornly sticking to the claim that he reduced truancy when he very clearly hasn't. But you can't go around saying you did something that you very clearly didn't and not expect to get called out on it.
Sources in the county justice system indicate that Urenda didn't even hear truancy cases the first year he was in office because they didn't know how to deal with them.
But documents released by his opponent Rebeca Bustamante indicate that Urenda has a hard time substantiating the claim that he has reduced truancy. Bustamante apparently did an open records request that came back yesterday. She requested "...statistics of Truancy referrals to the Justice of the Peace Precinct 4 from 2014 to present."
The letter from SISD indicated "...no records of the information requested were found..."
According to officials at Ysleta Independent School District there were ZERO cases referred to JP courts last year for truancy.
So the official word from the only two school districts in his precinct is that they haven't sent truancy cases to his court.
That begs the question, if they sent no cases to his court, how can his claims of reducing truancy be even remotely seen as true?
Simple.
They aren't.
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