Jesse Orta
Introduction
Jesse Ybarra Orta, a 34-year-old former band teacher at Somerset Academy Collegiate, a North Side San Antonio charter school, was indicted by a Bexar County grand jury on August 20, 2026 on three charges: two counts of improper relationship between educator and student, and one count of possession of child pornography. The indictments allege Orta had sexual intercourse with two students between November 1, 2023 and March 1, 2024, and possessed visual material of a child under 18 — the outgrowth of a September 2024 discovery that he had secretly recorded a teenage girl getting in and out of the shower. He was re-arrested in early September 2026 on the new charges and released after posting a $70,000 bond.
Background Information
Orta’s case began when a woman reported in September 2024 that she found a recording on his cellphone of a 17-year-old girl undressing to take a shower, according to the arrest affidavit. San Antonio police seized the phone, confirmed the girl had been recorded without her permission, and arrested Orta that October — initially on an invasive visual recording charge that was later upgraded to possession of child pornography. School administrators, meanwhile, had begun receiving reports that Orta was acting inappropriately with students and moved him into a new role limiting his contact with students; he subsequently resigned from the K-12 charter school, which served 1,089 students in the 2025-26 school year. Somerset Academy Collegiate did not respond to a request for comment from the San Antonio Express-News.
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Charged, not convicted. Orta faces two second-degree felony counts and one third-degree felony count from the August 2026 indictments. The allegations are unadjudicated and he is presumed innocent.
According to the indictments, the improper-relationship counts cover sexual contact with two students between November 1, 2023 and March 1, 2024. One of them, a 17-year-old student, told investigators the relationship began when Orta invited her to his office to talk about her personal life; she said he rubbed his hand over her genitals through her clothes and on another occasion kissed her, per the affidavit. She told investigators she would leave school during lunch period to have sex with Orta at his apartment, that the relationship continued after his resignation, and that when she tried to end it, Orta threatened to commit suicide — at which point she reported him to her mother and police. The child-pornography count alleges he possessed visual material of a child under 18 in late September 2024.
Public Reaction and Consequences
The indictment drew San Antonio-wide coverage in September 2026, with KSAT reporting the grand jury’s three counts from court documents and the Express-News detailing the affidavit’s account of a teacher-student relationship that outlasted his own resignation from the school. The pattern investigators described — a teacher whose administrators had already constrained his access to students before he resigned, only for the relationship with one student to continue at his apartment — became the case’s defining detail.
Current Status
Orta was re-arrested in early September 2026 on the indictment’s new counts, booked into the Bexar County jail, and released after posting a $70,000 bond. He is set to appear before state District Judge Ron Rangel in the 379th District Court on April 15, 2027. The two improper-relationship counts are second-degree felonies carrying up to twenty years each; the child-pornography count is a third-degree felony carrying up to ten. No pleas have been reported, and he remains presumed innocent.
Impact on Their Career/Life
Orta’s exit from teaching was already effectively forced in 2024, when administrators reassigning him away from students preceded his resignation — but the August 2026 indictments converted a quiet charter-school departure into three felony counts, a second arrest, and a docket that runs into 2027. A conviction on any count would carry years in prison and, under Texas law for educator-improper-relationship offenses, the permanent end of any education career. His name now sits in Bexar County court records beside two students’ accounts of what began in his band classroom.