Boy Bites Another in Scuffle : Kindergarten Suspends AIDS Victim, 4

A 4-year-old AIDS victim has been suspended from an Atascadero, Calif., kindergarten for biting a classmate, less than a week after his parents succeeded in a nine-month battle to have the boy admitted to the school.

Robin Thomas, the boy’s father, complained Wednesday about the suspension and medical experts said there is no record of anyone in this country contracting the deadly disease from a bite.

School officials said, however, that they will not allow the boy, Ryan Thomas, back into Santa Rosa Road Elementary School unless a special placement committee votes its approval Friday.

“We have asked him to stay at home,” said Anthony Avina, superintendent of the Atascadero Unified School District, which is north of San Luis Obispo. “We have to operate in a prudent manner and assure the safety of our students.”

“The question the school is asking has not been asked before,” said Principal Chuck Wilbur. “Does the incident present a hazard? We don’t know the answer yet. We want to find out.”

Robin Thomas said he is upset with how the school district is handling the incident. He said that his son was acting in self-defense when he bit the other boy and that he doesn’t understand why he can’t go back to school.

Attacked by Bigger Boy

Ryan was playing with another classmate Monday morning when a bigger boy attacked him from behind, Thomas said. “He hit Ryan in the head with his elbow, grabbed his hair with both hands and shoved his face to the floor,” Thomas said. “So Ryan bit him.”

Thomas said the bite did not break the skin.

When Ryan’s mother picked him up at school Monday, he had a note pinned to his shirt saying he had been in a fight and had bitten someone on the leg, Thomas said. “The teacher told her it was no big deal,” Thomas said. “We didn’t think anything about it.”

That night the principal called saying Ryan could not return to school.

Supt. Avina said Wednesday that “rather than act imprudently, we decided to go back to the placement committee. Ryan exhibited behavior that had been of concern to the committee previously.”

The committee, which includes a county health officer, a pediatrician, a school nurse, a psychologist, a teacher’s representative and a member of the PTA, had approved Ryan’s admission to school Sept. 2. His 18 classmates all had parental approval to attend class with the boy.

Ryan, born prematurely, contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion shortly after his birth.

Dr. Paul Volberding, director of San Francisco General Hospital’s AIDS ward, said that while low concentrations of the AIDS virus have been found in saliva, there is “certainly” no risk of transmission if the skin was not broken.

“No bites have been shown to cause infection,” Volberding said.

Dr. Martha Rogers of the National Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta said none of the 24,430 AIDS cases reported so far were transmitted through a human bite.

“The school was supposed to treat him like a normal child when the committee accepted him,” Ryan’s father said. “Now they go and do this. I don’t think he’s going to be able to understand it.”