Brea : School Board Approves AIDS-Related Policy

Students who either have symptoms of AIDS or who have been exposed to the disease could be barred from attending Brea’s schools under a new policy adopted this week.

The Brea-Olinda Unified School District Board will bar students with AIDS symptoms, as well as students whose immediate family members have AIDS, until the school district’s medical team and board have evaluated each case, according to Assistant Supt. Pete Boothroyd.

Under the policy adopted Thursday night, the board will make the final determination whether to readmit the student after a medical evaluation. The student may be provided home instruction at the expense of the school district “even though it’s under no legal obligation to do so,” the new policy states.

There are now no known cases of Brea students with acquired immune deficiency syndrome, which destroys the body’s immune system, but the policy was implemented “to be on the safe side,” Boothroyd said, adding:

“It’s a prevention. You don’t want to be placed in the position where something happens and you don’t have a way of handling it.”

In the south county, the guardian of an 11-year-old hemophiliac barred from school because his blood contains AIDS antibodies sued the Saddleback Valley Unified School District to allow the boy to return to school. Earlier this week, a Superior Court judge ruled that the boy be reinstated unless new examinations show that he is contagious. A person with AIDS antibodies does not necessarily develop AIDS, which, according to a family doctor, the boy does not have.

In Brea, the board said it would bar students until medical evaluations are completed “because the medical community has not produced a cure nor prevention for this fatal disease and because in the board’s judgment there is no conclusive evidence of all the ways the disease may be transmitted and because one of the board’s responsibilities is to provide for the health and safety of all students. . . . “