N.Y. Schools Get Swabs, Gloves to Fight AIDS

New York City is equipping all classrooms with alcohol-dipped swabs and providing custodians with rubber gloves to reduce the chances that AIDS will be spread from infected children, the city’s schools chancellor said Friday.

Nathan Quinones commented in his second day of testimony at a hearing on parents’ efforts to bar a second-grader with AIDS from the city schools. A city review board has ordered the child admitted.

Acquired immune deficiency syndrome, which breaks down the body’s immune system, can be transmitted by sexual contact, dirty hypodermic needles or blood transfusions.

Although experts do not believe bites or scratches can transmit AIDS, they recommend the use of alcohol swabs to cleanse any bite wound or scratch as a principle of general hygiene, New York Board of Education spokesman Bob Terte said, adding that the gloves were for custodians to use when cleaning up blood or other body fluids.

Schools Defy Order

Meanwhile, a school district in Trenton, N. J., told a kindergartner with AIDS to remain home despite a state order to admit her. Another district in northern New Jersey, the Washington Borough District, said that it will abide by the state’s order and readmit a fourth-grade boy whose sister is afflicted with an AIDS-related disease.

The state Health and Education departments had overruled bans imposed by the two school districts and ordered that the children be admitted.

But the kindergarten student, a 5-year-old girl from Plainfield, N. J., who was barred in September, will be ordered to continue with her home-study course until the school board votes on whether to take the issue to court, Trenton school district spokesman Richard Phoenix said.

In addition, state officials had ordered the Washington Borough District in northwestern New Jersey to readmit a fourth-grade boy whose sister suffers from an AIDS-related complex.