Aleysha Ortiz sued her Connecticut school district for allegedly failing to address her learning disabilities. She was illiterate when she graduated, she said.
Aleysha Ortiz was a high school sophomore when she received her first "A" on an assignment, a story she submitted for English class. She'll never forget it.
"Before, I would just trace an 'A' and pretend like someone gave this [grade] to me," she told The Washington Post.
Ortiz, 19, did not write or type her story. She spoke it to her computer and used speech-to-text software to transcribe it, like she did with all her schoolwork at Hartford Public High School in Connecticut.
Despite this, Ortiz alleges in her lawsuit that she was never provided adequate therapy or special education support. In elementary and middle school, she exhibited behavioral issues and was frequently kept in her principal's office instead of class and ignored by administrators when she lobbied for additional support. She was still illiterate when she graduated -- with honors -- last spring, she said.
"I begged people to support me," Ortiz said. "They told me, 'No.' I wanted to know what was going on with my brain. They told me it was too late."
Ortiz now studies at the University of Connecticut. But she is still digging out of the hole she was buried in by over a decade of negligence from one of the state's largest school districts, according to her lawsuit. Ortiz's experience, previously reported by the Connecticut Mirror, shocked state legislators and prompted scrutiny of what some teachers called an overstretched school system in financial straits.
The lawsuit, which seeks $15,000 in damages, names the City of Hartford, the Hartford Board of Education and Hartford Public Schools teacher Tilda Santiago as defendants. Santiago did not respond to a request for comment. Hartford education board chair Jennifer Hockenhull and the city's top attorney, Hartford corporation counsel Jonathan Harding, declined to comment.
Superintendent Leslie Torres-Rodriguez did not respond to a request for comment but said at an October education board meeting that she was "deeply concerned" by Ortiz's allegations and looking into her case.
Ortiz was 5 when her family moved to Connecticut from Puerto Rico seeking better services for students with disabilities. In Puerto Rico, Ortiz had been diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, oppositional defiant disorder and a speech impediment, she said. A teacher in Hartford reported that she struggled with letter, sound and number recognition, according to her lawsuit.
Despite this, Ortiz alleged in her lawsuit that she was never provided adequate therapy or special education support. In elementary and middle school, she exhibited behavioral issues and was frequently kept in her principal's office instead of in class. When she was in class, teachers confined her to simple activities like tracing letters on worksheets, and she felt secluded from her peers, she said.
"The assignments would be either me sweeping the floors ... or they sent me around the classroom cleaning, organizing books to distract myself," Ortiz said.
School records documented Ortiz's deficits -- in the sixth grade, her academic skills were at a kindergarten or first-grade level -- and that she was at a high risk for depression, according to her lawsuit.
Still, Hartford Public Schools allegedly did not change her academic programming or address her disabilities. In Ortiz's junior year of high school, she was bullied and harassed by Tilda Santiago, a special-education case manager assigned to her, according to her lawsuit.
Ortiz said she was not held back throughout middle school despite not being given grades for assignments. Intent to graduate and attend college, she could only try to make up the difference herself. She tried to teach herself to read by doing karaoke and memorizing the letters that appeared with each song. She struggled through high school by recording each class to listen back to teachers and transcribing her assignments with dictation software.
"Sometime I would have to go to the bathroom and pretend like I was talking to someone, but really I was just answering the question of an assignment," she said.
Ortiz said she came to enjoy writing stories and poems using dictation. She turned in a capstone project titled "Special Education: A Systemic Failure" printed out on poster board and graduated on the honor roll. When she applied to the University of Connecticut against her teachers' advice, she wrote an essay about her experience at school.
"It hasn't been easy," Ortiz wrote. "I've wanted to do more, but I'm still trying to catch up. That hasn't stopped me from applying to universities."
When Ortiz first spoke out about her experience with Hartford Public Schools in September, she kicked off a chorus of concerns. A former teacher wrote in the Connecticut Mirror that the district had far too few special education teachers, and some had over 80 students on their caseloads.
Members of the state legislature blasted the school district in October and proposed subjecting state education funding to greater oversight, the nonprofit news network States Newsroom reported. A spokesperson for the district retorted to the outlet that Hartford Public Schools was beset by staffing shortages and should not lose more resources. The city passed a budget in May that cut over $30 million for the school district, according to the Hartford Courant.
For her part, Ortiz said she wants to keep other students from enduring a similar ordeal. She still completes assignments by transcription in college, but she now receives help from the University of Connecticut's Center for Students with Disabilities. Since graduating from high school, Ortiz has started to worry about the challenges she'll face with her poor literacy, such as getting a driver's license or her first job. Her dream is to earn a doctorate.
On Tuesday, Ortiz spoke -- haltingly at first, but with growing confidence -- at a Hartford education board meeting, addressing her former superintendent.
"I wish I could say I was a proud grad of Hartford Public Schools," Ortiz said. "But I consider myself more as a survivor."