Boy Who Has AIDS Antibodies Gains in Bid to Return to School

A Superior Court judge ruled Wednesday that an 11-year-old hemophiliac barred from school because his blood has AIDS antibodies should be reinstated unless new examinations show that the boy is contagious.

Channon Phipps has not attended his El Toro elementary school since classes began in September and has been tutored at home at school district expense. His aunt, Deborha Phipps, who is also his guardian, sued the Saddleback Valley Unified School District in November seeking to have him admitted to school.

The presence of AIDS antibodies means the person can be a carrier of the disease, but not all those with the antibodies develop AIDS. The boy does not have AIDS, according to his family doctor.

AIDS, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome, destroys the body’s immune system, leaving the victim vulnerable to a variety of tumors and infectious diseases. There is no known cure. AIDS is not spread through casual contact but is transmitted through body fluids, primarily by sexual contact and the sharing of unsterilized hypodermic needles. Those at highest risk include homosexual and bisexual men and intravenous drug users.

Judge Harmon G. Scoville ordered Orange County’s chief health officer, Dr. Tom Prendergast, to examine Channon within 12 days to determine if he is “infectious or contagious.” Scoville is expected to rule on Prendergast’s conclusions at a hearing set for Feb. 20.

“I’ll tell you right now,” Scoville said, that if it is determined that the boy poses no danger to other schoolchildren, “I don’t see any reason he shouldn’t be back in school, and I don’t think the district disagrees.”

“The court is concerned about Channon; he has certain rights,” Scoville concluded. He said the court also is “concerned with the 17,000 other students in the district. . . . Let’s have those examinations done.”

“I’m glad, I guess,” Channon said Wednesday afternoon when asked about the judge’s ruling. “But I’ve gotta go do my homework now, so bye.”

Deborha Phipps requested the hearing Wednesday in an effort to have the court order district officials to readmit the boy on the grounds that his personal physician has examined him and determined that he poses no threat of infecting other children.

Why Channon was not in school from September through Nov. 26, when the lawsuit was filed, is disputed by both sides.

Thought Tutoring Temporary

His aunt has maintained that district officials initially told her not to bring Channon to school after she informed them last August that his blood had the AIDS antibodies. After she filed the lawsuit, Phipps has said, she understood that he would be admitted once he passed a routine examination given all students with extended absences because of communicable diseases. She said she thought the home tutoring provided by the district was only a “temporary” measure until any uproar in the community about the case had died down.

Channon and Deborha Phipps did not attend Wednesday’s hearing.

David C. Larsen, representing the district, told the judge that the district had no idea Phipps was dissatisfied with her nephew’s at-home education until they received queries from the media about the lawsuit. He said the health examinations that Scoville ordered had been requested previously by the district.

Merwin Auslander, the Phippses’ attorney, said district officials had not asked for the examinations until Jan. 26, five months after they learned the boy had tested positive for the AIDS-linked virus. He said Deborha Phipps signed a release of Channon’s medical records that same day.

Both attorneys quoted education codes, with Auslander arguing that state law requires all children to be in school unless they have a contagious ailment and Larsen countering that a principal has the right to make a discretionary decision.

Scoville stopped short of ordering the boy reinstated Wednesday, but he expressed his disappointment about the length of time Channon Phipps has been out of school.

Prendergast, reached by telephone at his office Wednesday afternoon, said he had not received the judge’s order or any official notice to examine Channon but would comply with the court’s request, if possible.

Blood Culture Required

The court order did not specify what the examination of the boy should entail, and Scoville declined to elaborate without the attorneys for both sides present.

Prendergast said that it could take him several weeks to determine whether the AIDS virus is present in the boy’s blood because a blood culture would be required. Those test results would not be available for the Feb. 20 hearing, he said.

“I’m not quite sure what I’m supposed to be doing,” Prendergast said. “I’m much more concerned, though, that the case turn out for the boy (so) that he . . . can go to school and be normal. His interests are getting caught in the cross fire.”

The Phipps case marks the first time in California that a student who is not afflicted with AIDS, but has the antibodies, has been banned from school, according to Prendergast and Paul L. Hoffman, an ACLU attorney who tried unsuccessfully to intervene in the case on behalf of the Hemophilia Foundation of Southern California.

Scoville denied the ACLU request to intervene but said he will allow the Hemophilia Foundation to act as a “friend of the court” by providing any information that might assist the court in making a decision.