Although she cannot read or write, Aleysha Ortiz graduated with honors from high school. The 19-year-old completed Hartford Public High School in Hartford, Connecticut, last June and received a scholarship to college.
During a May 2024 city council meeting, Ortiz testified that she was illiterate after 12 years of attending Hartford public schools. According to her, school administrators became uncomfortable about issuing her a diploma.
She said that two days before graduation, school district officials told her she may defer accepting the diploma in return for intensive treatment. She paid no attention.
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She told CNN “I decided, they (the school) had 12 years. Now it’s my time.”
Ortiz is currently suing the Hartford Board of Education and the City of Hartford for negligence; she is also suing her special education case manager, Tilda Santiago, for negligent infliction of mental distress.
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The teen was born in Puerto Rico, where she claimed to have had learning disabilities since she was a toddler. Carmen Cruz, her mother, said she knew her daughter needed support from the very beginning.
“I saw that she had a specific problem she had to deal with,” Cruz told the news outlet.
Cruz relocated her family to Connecticut when Ortiz was five years old, hoping that she would receive better services for her learning disabilities. However, she still had difficulties in school.
According to her lawsuit, Ortiz struggled with letter, sound, and number recognition in first grade. And because her learning difficulties were not addressed, she began to act out in class.
“I was the bad child,” Ortiz recalled.
According to Ortiz’s lawsuit, by sixth grade, she was reading at a kindergarten or first-grade level.
There was no improvement in high school. Santiago began working as Ortiz’s special education teacher and case manager during her sophomore year at Hartford Public High School.
According to the lawsuit, Santiago subjected Ortiz “to repeated bullying and harassment,” including stalking her on school grounds. The lawsuit also claims Santiago humiliated the teenager in front of teachers and other students, ridiculing her learning challenges.
According to the lawsuit, Ortiz reported the behavior to school officials, and Santiago was later removed as her case manager “because of the dysfunctional relationship” between them.
Ortiz also claimed her mother advocated for her, urging the principal and other school officials to better address her daughter’s problems.
Cruz is a mother of four who said she only completed the eighth grade of school and cannot speak English.
“I didn’t know English very well, I didn’t know the rules of the schools. 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.”
Ortiz began standing up for herself in 11th grade, when she complained that she “could barely hold a pencil.” She realized that if she wanted to be a writer or live a regular life, she needed to learn to read and write.
During her final year, some of her teachers recommended that she be tested for dyslexia, a learning condition that causes difficulties with reading due to a failure to understand sounds and how they relate to letters and words.
During her senior year, Ortiz also made an unexpected announcement: she had been admitted to the University of Connecticut and planned to begin classes in the fall.
Ortiz said that just a month before graduation, she began to receive the additional testing she had requested.
The lawsuit alleges that the evaluations were not completed until the last day of high school. According to the results of the exam, Ortiz still needed explicitly taught phonics, fluency and reading comprehension.
She was previously diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), unspecified anxiety disorder, and unspecified communication disorder.
She used technology or apps to complete her college application, including drafting an essay. She also received assistance from others in navigating the process, as well as several financial awards and scholarships to pay for her education at UCONN.
The apps, which translate text to speech and speech to text, offered her “a voice that I never thought I had,” she said.
Meanwhile, the board’s chairperson, Jennifer Hockenhull, declined to comment on the case. Jonathan Harding, the City of Hartford’s senior legal officer, told CNN that “I generally do not publicly remark on ongoing litigation.”
In a statement to CNN, Hartford Public Schools said, “While Hartford Public Schools cannot comment on pending litigation, we remain 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 claims she is pursuing legal action because school authorities “don’t know what they’re doing and don’t care,” and she wants them held accountable for what she alleges she encountered.
She is also demanding compensation.
According to her mother, she is now speaking out about her daughter “so other people in my position don’t have to go through the same thing.”
Looking back on her twelve years in the Hartford public school system, Aleysha said she regrets not being taught to read and write.
She also plans to continue speaking out because she believes her city’s schools can do better.
“I’m a very passionate person and I like to learn,” she said. “People took (away) that opportunity for me to learn, and now I’m in college and I wanna take advantage of that. Because this is my education.”
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