Oceanside Schools Skirt Action on AIDS Policy

A divided school board, unable to agree on whether to permit children with acquired immune deficiency syndrome to remain in school or to ban them from the classroom, opted Tuesday night to avoid the issue and rely on existing district policies to cover the problem.

The decision by the Oceanside Unified School District’s Board of Trustees came after county public health educator Tony Marshal failed to persuade a majority of board members that the possibility of transmitting AIDS on the playground is very low.

“The scenarios in which blood is exchanged in the school setting are few,” said Marshal, adding that if there is a danger, it is to the AIDS victim, whose immune system cannot fight off diseases carried by other children.

But at least one board member, Barbara McCarley, wasn’t convinced.

“My impression is that we know some ways AIDS is transmitted but we don’t know all ways,” said McCarley, newly elected board president. “That really bothers me.”

By choosing to handle AIDS cases with existing district guidelines covering communicable diseases, like chicken pox and measles, the board rejected two model AIDS policies prepared by the California School Boards Assn. One allowed for admission of most students with the deadly disease, while the second would have excluded AIDS victims. Oceanside’s existing policy bars from school any student living where “any contagious, infectious or communicable disease exists, or has existed, which is subject to quarantine.”

AIDS is caused by a virus that destroys its victims’ ability to fight off infection. A fatal syndrome transmitted through body fluids and sexual contact, it has primarily affected homosexual and bisexual men, intravenous drug users and recipients of infected blood products.

About 217 cases, or less than 2% of all AIDS cases recorded in the United States, have been children. According to health officials, these victims were either born to mothers with AIDS or were infected by receiving transfusions of contaminated blood, according to health officials.

Oceanside is not the first district to grapple with the AIDS question. In perhaps the most emotional episode involving children afflicted with the syndrome, New York City parents kept 18,000 pupils out of class because an unidentified AIDS victim was permitted to attend school.

Locally, trustees of the San Diego and San Marcos school districts have voted against allowing AIDS victims in the classroom. Coronado school board members passed an interim policy excluding students infected with the virus, but later decided that they lacked sufficient information to take such a stand.

Officials in other San Diego County districts are waiting for guidance from the state Department of Education before adopting policies.

Susie Lange, director of public relations for the Department of Education, said guidelines covering students with AIDS will be released early next year. She said the department is expected to recommenda “flexible, case-by-case policy.”

“We don’t want to mandate anything, but we’ll likely suggest that each case be weighed on its merits in consultation with the child, parents and doctors,” Lange said. “We will also emphasize education, because adolescents are in a position where they could engage in either sexual or drug-related behavior that could spread disease, and they need to know that.”

There have been no reported cases of AIDS in the 12,700-student Oceanside district, but several trustees believed they should anticipate a problem and adopt a policy. Agreement on just what that policy should be, however, proved impossible Tuesday night.

McCarley, sounding a “better safe than sorry” theme, said she is not convinced that the answers on AIDS are known, and she favors exclusion of any infected students.

But other trustees said they find persuasive the most recent medical arguments that AIDS cannot be spread through casual contact. Although the virus has been detected in saliva and tears, researchers said it was so fragile it died almost instantly outside the body.

“All the evidence I’ve seen indicates the chances of children spreading it to one another are nil,” said Trustee Bibbs Orr. “I would not hesitate to send my child into a classroom knowing a student in there had AIDS.”

Trustee Robert Nichols, stating that he’s no medical expert, said he must rely on the best scientific information available and assume it’s safe to enroll AIDS victims. Nichols said he also fears that excluding a victim would irreparably stigmatize the child and family.

“I’m afraid we’d really destroy a kid if we single him out, paint an ‘A’ on his head,” Nichols said. “When parents get emotional about these things and start thinking about their No. 1 kid, a lot of damage can be done.”