A Connecticut honor student is suing her school district, alleging that she was never taught to read and write.
Aleysha Ortiz, 19, graduated from Hartford Public High School in June with honors and was awarded a scholarship to the University of Connecticut — but despite those achievements, she alleges she is still illiterate, the New York Post reported.
Ortiz, who spent 12 years in the Hartford public school district and is a native of Puerto Rico, testified about her experience at a May city council meeting and explained how the educational system failed her.
“I decided, they [the school] had 12 years,” Ortiz told CNN. “Now it’s my time.”
Ortiz filed a lawsuit against the Hartford Board of Education, the City of Hartford, and her special education case manager, Tilda Santiago, for negligence.
The lawsuit details that Ortiz had learning disabilities as early as first grade and struggled with “letter, sound, and number recognition.” She alleges her issues were not addressed and she began acting out in school.
“I was the bad child,” she told CNN.
By sixth grade, Ortiz alleges she was only reading at the kindergarten or first-grade level.
As a sophomore at Hartford Public High School, Santiago was assigned as Ortiz’s special education teacher and case manager. Ortiz alleges in the lawsuit that Santiago bullied, harassed, and stalked her, and that Santiago was later removed from the role.
Ortiz’s mother, Carmen Cruz, barely speaks English but said she tried her best to advocate for her daughter, including speaking with school officials and the principal.
“I didn’t know English very well, I didn’t know the rules of the schools,” she told the CNN. “There were a lot of things that they would tell me, and I let myself go by what the teachers would tell me because I didn’t understand anything.”
By the time Ortiz was a junior in high school, she began to advocate for herself, which led to her teachers recommending she test for dyslexia, according to the report.
The lawsuit alleges that she was finally tested for dyslexia one month before she graduated, but the test was not finished until her last day of high school.
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The test concluded that Ortiz is, in fact, dyslexic, and “required explicitly taught phonics, fluency and reading comprehension.”
Ortiz alleges that school district officials said she could defer accepting her high school diploma to receive intensive services, which she rejected.
Hartford Public Schools said in a statement to CNN that while it does not comment on pending litigation, the district is “deeply committed to meeting the full range of needs our students bring with them when they enter our schools — and helping them reach their full potential.”
“Ortiz, who dreams of becoming a writer, is currently attending the University Connecticut as a full-time student, although she hasn’t been to classes since Feb. 1 in order to get mental health treatment,” according to the Post.
Ortiz uses apps that translate text to speech and speech to text to complete her college assignments, just as she did in high school.
Ortiz said the apps gave “me a voice that I never thought I had.”
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