A Connecticut honors student is suing her school district, saying she is illiterate.
Despite graduating from Hartford Public High School in June with honors and getting a scholarship to the University of Connecticut, Aleysha Ortiz is claiming she cannot read or write.
The 19-year-old, who spent 12 years in the Hartford public school district, testified at a May city council meeting, explaining her unique situation and how the educational system failed her.
“I decided, they [the school] had 12 years,” Ortiz, a native of Puerto Rico, told CNN. “Now it’s my time.”
Ortiz is suing the Hartford Board of Education, the City of Hartford and her special education case manager, Tilda Santiago, for negligence.
According to her lawsuit, she began having problems with “letter, sound and number recognition” as early as first grade, and because those issues were not addressed, she began acting out in school.
“I was the bad child,” she told the outlet.
When she was in 6th grade, she was reading at a mere kindergarten or first-grade level, Ortiz alleges.
When Ortiz was a sophomore at Hartford Public High School, Santiago was assigned as her special education teacher and case manager.
Santiago bullied, harassed and stalked Ortiz, and was later removed from the role, the suit claims.
Although she hardly speaks English, Ortiz’s mother, Carmen Cruz, did her best to advocate for her daughter, speaking to the principal and other school officials.
“I didn’t know English very well, I didn’t know the rules of the schools,” she told the outlet.
“There were a lot of things that they would tell me, and I let myself go by what the teachers wouldtell me because I didn’t understand anything.”
By the 11th grade, Ortiz began taking matters into her own hands and started speaking up for herself, which led her teachers to suggest she get tested for dyslexia.
Just one month before graduation, she began receiving the testing, which was not completed until the last day of high school, the lawsuit states.
The testing concluded that Ortiz was in fact dyslexic and “required explicitly taught phonics, fluency and reading comprehension.”
School district officials told Ortiz she could defer accepting her diploma and receive intensive services, she alleges.
“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,” Hartford Public Schools said in a statement to CNN.
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.
To complete her college assignments, she is relying on apps that translate text to speech and speech to text, as she did in high school.
The apps gave “me a voice that I never thought I had,” she said.
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