I see words everywhere … without any meaning
The high school is over with distinction but can not read or write. Now has advanced with a court case
by Sabrina Clay e Danny FreemanCNN
Aleysha Ortiz is 19 and dreams of writing stories and perhaps even a book. This may seem like a reasonable aspiration for a teenager who has just left the High School, but for Aleysha it will be much more difficult.
Despite being formed last June at Hartford Public High School in Hartford, Connecticut, USA, and gaining a scholarship for the university, Aleysha is illiterate. He says he doesn’t know how to read or write.
Many secondary education finalists feel proud and enthusiastic in the days before graduation. But Aleysha tells CNN that she felt scared.
He graduated with distinction, which usually means that a student demonstrated academic excellence. But after 12 years attending public schools in Hartford, Aleysha witnessed at a municipal council meeting in May 2024 that he could not read or write. Suddenly, he says, school staff seemed concerned about granting him a diploma.
Two days before graduation, he says, school district officials told him that he could postpone the acceptance of the diploma in exchange for intensive services. Aleysha did not hear.
“I decided that they (school) were 12 years old,” she says. “Now it’s my turn.”
Aleysha is now processing the Hartford Education Council and the city of Hartford for negligence, as well as her special education manager, Tilda Santiago, for negligent infliction of emotional suffering.
Council President Jennifer Hockenhull refused to comment on the lawsuit.
The same happened with Jonathan Harding, legal director of Hartford, who tells CNN: “In general, I do not publicly comment on the ongoing disputes.” CNN contacted Santiago through its lawyer, but got no response.
In a statement to CNN, Hartford’s public schools thus state: “Although Hartford’s public schools cannot comment outstanding disputes, we are still deeply committed to meeting the entire range of needs our students bring with them when they enter our schools – and help them reach their full potential.”
But an educator says Aleysha’s story is not surprising.
Jesse Turner, who directs the Literacy Center of the Central State University of Connecticut, says that the quality of special education in public schools usually varies according to the postal code and demography.
An Edbuild 2019 report, which promotes equity in public schools, found that most non -white school districts receive 22 billion euros less than districts that mainly serve white students. Minority enrollment in Hartford public schools were about 90% during the school years of 2020-2021 and 2021-2022.
“America should be asking a question: do we really worry about our children – all our children?” Turner asks.
She fought like a “bad child” at school
Aleysha was born in Puerto Rico, where, even in a child, he says he evidenced learning deficits.
His mother, Carmen Cruz, says that early on he realized that his daughter needed help.
“I saw that she had a specific problem she had to deal with,” Carmen Cruz tells CNN.
When Aleysha was 5 years old, Carmen Cruz moved her family to Connecticut, believing that Aleysha would receive better services for her learning difficulties.
But their difficulties at school continued.
In the first year, Aleysha “had difficulty recognizing letters, sounds and numbers”, according to the lawsuit. And as her learning difficulties were not treated, Aleysha began to behave badly in class.
“I was the bad child,” says Aleysha.
By the time Aleysha reached the 6th grade, he says in the lawsuit, the assessments showed that she was reading at the kindergarten or first year.
High school was no better. In his second year at Hartford Public High School, Tilda Santiago became a special education teacher and Aleysha cases manager. The lawsuit claims that Santiago submitted Aleysha “to repeated intimidation and harassment”, including chasing her in the school room. The process also claims that Santiago belittled Aleysha in front of teachers and other students and came with their learning difficulties.
Aleysha says he denounced the behavior to school staff and Santiago was eventually removed from the position of manager of his case “due to the dysfunctional relationship” they had, according to the process.
Aleysha also says that her mother advocated on her behalf and urged the director and other school staff to do better work in treating her daughter’s deficiencies. Mother of four, Carmen Cruz does not speak English and says she stopped going to school from the eighth grade.
“Aleysha didn’t know English very well, she didn’t know the school rules. There were many things that told me and I would let me go for what the teachers told me because I myself didn’t realize anything. ”
In the 11th grade, when Aleysha reported that he could even hold on a pencil, ”he began to defend himself. He says he knew that if he ever wanted to realize his dreams of becoming a writer or having a normal life, he needed to know how to read and write.
Last year, some teachers suggested that Aleysha take a dyslexia test, a learning difficulty that makes reading difficult due to the inability to recognize sounds and the way they relate to letters and words.
Also, during his last year, Aleysha made an amazing announcement: he had been accepted at Connecticut University and planned to enter the fall.
Just a month before graduation, Aleysha says she finally started receiving the additional tests she had asked. The evaluations were only completed on the last day of the High School, says the lawsuit. The tests revealed that Aleysha still “needed explicit teaching of phonetics, fluency and reading understanding.”
Phonetics is usually taught for the first time in the kindergarten.
After being tested, Aleysha was also diagnosed with attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (“ADHD”), challenging opposition disorder (“ODD”), unspecified anxiety disorder, unspecified communication disorder and dyslexia.
I see words everywhere … without any meaning
Last fall, Aleysha enrolled at Connecticut University as a full-time student, attending two classes. Want to study public policies.
So how did Aleysha become a university student who doesn’t know how to read or write? Just as he managed to finish high school, he says: using applications that translate text to speech and speak to text.
He used technology to fill his candidacy for college, including writing a rehearsal. He also received help from others to navigate the process and received several financial subsidies and scholarships to pay UCONN.
The applications gave me “a voice I never thought to have,” he says.
Aleysha says that, most of the time, teachers passed her from year to year at elementary and secondary school. But when he arrived on high school, he had already discovered how to use technology to accomplish his tasks.
When most teenagers walked through the shopping center, he went to school events or meetings, Aleysha says he spent four to five hours a night doing homework.
Aleysha says she recorded all classes on her mobile phone and then reproduced everything the teachers said. He used the voice tool for text from his laptop to look for the definition of each word and then transformed the audio text he could understand. When he understood the task, he spoke the answer, turned it into text, and then cut and glued the words into homework.
Due to its limited vocabulary and speech problem, translation was not always exactly or grammatically correct, he explains. But the use of technology has helped increase your C and D notes to A and B, he adds.
Aleysha says she was starting to do the TPC as soon as she arrived at school and ended up every night at 1 or 2 in the morning, before getting up at 6 am to get the bus back to school.
Aleysha demonstrated to CNN how to use the application. He chose a passage from a book, took an image of it on his mobile phone, and then reproduced the mobile phone audio to read the ticket aloud.
When they asked him if he could read the book’s passage, Aleysha thus answered CNN: “It’s impossible. I see these words everywhere … without any meaning. ”
Aleysha says the college has been very difficult. UCONN has been providing academic support, but Aleysha has not been going to school since February 1. He says he took some time to receive mental health treatment, but plans to return soon.
Aleysha wants to hold the school staff responsible
Aleysha’s lawsuit comes as President Donald Trump is taking steps to get rid of the Federal Department of Education (DOE), saying he wants to “end taxpayers’ dollar abuse to indoctrinate America’s youth.”
The proposal for change will empty the agency’s staff and leave student financing and education to local states and municipalities.
Turner, the Connecticut educator, says that closing the DOE is a bad idea. It argues that if we put the responsibility to finance children’s education in the hands of each state, not everyone will do the right thing.
“How do I protect children from special education? Who should I address? ” Turner adds that it is to DOE that schools, students and parents go to complain because “they have to investigate.”
Aleysha says he is making a lawsuit because the school leaders “do not know what they are doing and do not care,” adding that they want them to be held responsible for what she says he has lived. It also intends to obtain compensatory compensation.
Carmen Cruz, Aleysha’s mother, tells CNN she is talking about her daughter now “so that other people in my position don’t have to go through it.”
Remembering the 12 years he spent on Hartford’s public school system, Aleysha claims to feel sad about not being taught to read and write. He also says he will continue to speak because he believes that the schools in your city can do better.
“I am a very passionate person and I like to learn. People have taken me this opportunity to learn and now I’m at university and I want to take advantage of it. Because this is my education. ”
