Boy With AIDS Antibodies Will Be Admitted to School

An 11-year-old El Toro hemophiliac whose blood contains AIDS-linked antibodies was not expelled from school and will be admitted, district officials said Wednesday, following a suit by the boy’s guardian aunt claiming that he was denied an adequate education.

“I don’t think we’ll be going to court. We got what we wanted,” said Deborha Phipps, who has raised the boy since he was a year old. “All I wanted was an education for my son.”

Late Wednesday afternoon Phipps said: “I just got a phone call (from a district official) saying it looks like he’ll be back in school within a month. It looks like things are going to work out.”

Suit Claimed Expulsion

In the suit filed in Orange County Superior Court against Saddleback Valley Unified School District, Phipps claimed that Channon Phipps had been “expelled” from his elementary school.

But district officials denied the claim. And Phipps admitted Wednesday that Channon had not been expelled but said she had been told by Assistant Supt. Joseph Platow before the school year began, “Don’t bring Channon to school.”

District officials also denied that statement had been made.

“The boy was never expelled,” Supt. Peter Hartman said Wednesday. “And to my knowledge, no one has ever told him he couldn’t come back to his school. We (the school district) have never come to the conclusion that he couldn’t come back.”

Requests Denied

Said Phipps: “He wasn’t being allowed in school so he never had a chance to be expelled.”

Platow also had denied her requests for more hours of home tutoring for Channon, Phipps said. “I finally told Dr. Platow that if he wouldn’t give the boy adequate tutoring at home, I was going to file suit,” she said.

Channon takes weekly injections of a blood extract for the hemophilia he has suffered since birth, but he does not have acquired immune deficiency syndrome, Phipps said. The AIDS antibodies were discovered through blood tests at a Long Beach clinic this summer, she said.

According to both the school district and Phipps, Channon may return to classes at Rancho Canada Elementary School in El Toro once he passes the health examination required of all children who have been out of school for an extended time. Until then, they said, he will be tutored at home.

Physicians and public health officials reiterated Wednesday there is no reason to keep a student infected with AIDS or the AIDS-linked antibody out of school because the disease cannot be transmitted through ordinary, casual contact.

While Channon’s case is the only one he knows of, Dr. Thomas Prendergast, Orange County public health epidemiologist, said there are bound to be several students who have been exposed to the AIDS virus because virtually all hemophiliacs carry the antibody.

Prendergast said 92% to 98% of hemophiliacs nationwide have the AIDS antibody, although only a very small percentage of them contract the disease. He said there are about 20,000 hemophiliacs nationwide, and 111 of them have been infected with AIDS.

Several physicians contacted by The Times on Wednesday referred to research by Luc Montagnier, a virologist at Paris’ Pasteur Institute, who conducted a study at a French boarding school where about 50 hemophiliacs--half of whom were infected with the AIDS virus--shared living quarters and classrooms with 70 uninfected students. Montagnier found no evidence that AIDS was transmitted to the other students.

On Wednesday, the Saddleback district’s director of home tutoring services apologized to Phipps for the situation, she said, and told her he only learned of her request for additional tutoring hours when he read the newspaper that morning.

Phipps said the lawsuit was prompted by the amount of tutoring Channon was receiving at home: an average of four hours a week.

Her suit claimed that Channon was expelled from school in August or September, “based on the revelation” that the boy’s blood contains AIDS antibodies. It demanded that the district “admit (Channon) to the full use and enjoyment of the educational facilities to which he otherwise would be entitled. . . .”

Sitting at the kitchen table of the family’s condominium with Channon and Justin, her fiance’s 4-year-old son, Phipps, 29, said Wednesday that all she wanted from the lawsuit was to have the boy “allowed back to school or give him enough tutoring so he can learn.” The suit did not seek money, she pointed out.

In the summer, Channon had been tutored at the family’s expense because problems with the hemophilia had left him behind in his studies, Phipps said.

When the AIDS antibodies were discovered in Channon’s blood, Phipps said, she told the tutor, who reportedly contacted a district psychologist. The psychologist told Phipps that Platow would contact her, Phipps said.

Several times before this school year began, Phipps said, Platow had told her “not to bring Channon to school.” He told her the district was trying to arrange for home tutoring, Phipps said, but that “we may not be able to find any tutors in this district who are willing to tutor your child.”

Platow said he had talked to her but had never said Channon could not return to school.

He also said Phipps had never complained about inadequate tutoring.

Phipps said Wednesday that Channon needs at least twice as much tutoring as the district has provided since November to catch up with his fifth-grade schoolmates. He now is working at the second-grade level, she said, particularly in his math.

Channon “used to know division,” she said, “and now he’s just confused by it.”

As Channon watched Bugs Bunny cartoons and drew “dragons and stuff,” Phipps said he has handled the publicity with aplomb.

Asked about it, Channon scratched his short brown hair and shrugged.

“I just want to go back to school. I can do what the other boys wanna. I ride skateboards and ride bikes and stuff like all the other kids do. . . . I just miss not going to school.”

Times staff writer Marcida Dodson contributed to this story.