A Connecticut school district has told a judge it should be legally shielded from a lawsuit over a resident teen graduating despite her inability to read or write at the time. Attorneys representing the city of Hartford and the Hartford Board of Education are making their case that they enjoy a level of legal immunity in the face of a civil lawsuit from Aleysha Ortiz.
Ortiz’s suit contends she was pushed through the school system without her disability, keeping her from functionally reading or writing, being addressed. She’s seeking undisclosed damages.
Immunity
In their filings from May 16, both the city and the board ask the judge to strike part of Ortiz’s complaint that they said falls within the boundaries of “governmental acts” that are immune to lawsuits compared to negligence in “ministerial acts.”
Both defendants cited a 2020 Connecticut Supreme Court ruling involving a lawsuit against a police officer after a police chase ended in a collision that killed the passenger in a fleeing vehicle. In that ruling, the state’s high court said governmental entities need some level of immunity or the lawsuits would “cramp the exercise of official discretion beyond the limits desirable in our society.”
A defense attorney for Ortiz told Straight Arrow News that defendants are attempting to skirt responsibility.
“We are not surprised that the city of Hartford is trying to hide behind an immunity defense,” said Anthony Spinella, an attorney for Ortiz. “It appears that the Board of Education and the Mayor refuse to take accountability for the harm they have caused Aleysha.”
What happened?
Ortiz had been enrolled in the Hartford School District since she was in first grade. Due to her developmental disabilities (the complaint infers she’s dyslexic), the lawsuit alleges a staff member bullied and harassed her.
The complaint said evaluations showed Ortiz’s sixth-grade reading ability and other academic skills were at a kindergarten or first-grade level. As she progressed through school, the complaint says Ortiz pleaded for testing to determine if she had dyslexia. By her senior year of high school, school personnel told her it was too late to conduct those tests.
The complaint says the board agreed to test Ortiz for a developmental disability but not until she was near graduation. The results given to Ortiz on the final day of her senior year said she had “not mastered a number of foundational reading skills.” She required phonics, fluency and reading comprehension.
Ortiz filed the lawsuit naming the city, board of education, and a special education teacher on Dec. 10, 2024. It alleges negligence on behalf of the City of Hartford and the Hartford Board of Education and “Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress” by Tilda Santiago, a special education caseworker employed by the district.
Precedent
The Connecticut suit is litigated months after a federal appellate court on Feb. 3, 2025, sided with a Tennessee man who sued his former school district after graduating him from high school without the ability to read or write at the appropriate grade level.
Referred to as “William A.” in court documents, the plaintiff enrolled at Clarksville-Montgomery County school district northwest of Nashville in 2016 as a fifth grader. Despite putting him on an individualized education program, or IEP, he eventually graduated from the district without his dyslexia being addressed.
