Teacher With AIDS Says Job Fight Is for All Victims

An Orange County teacher with AIDS Tuesday described his battle to return to the classroom as a civil rights struggle for other victims of the disease.

“I would hope my case will help others,” he said in an interview at his attorney’s Santa Ana office. “There are some who’ve encouraged me to just go ahead and take disability and quit working. I’m not comfortable with that, because I feel like I’m capable of working. . . . I’m a good teacher. My students like me.”

The teacher is a seven-year employee of the Orange County Department of Education who said he instructs hearing-impaired students. He is identified in the court documents only as “John Doe” and asked during the interview that he remain anonymous.

His attorney, Marjorie Rushforth, said she would neither confirm nor deny published reports that he teaches in Irvine.

The county education department wants the teacher to take an at-home job, such as writing grant proposals for schools. The department has asked the Orange County Superior Court for a judgment on his right to work and whether his students and colleagues should be notified.

The 42-year-old teacher said acquired immune deficiency syndrome poses no danger to students or his colleagues and has filed a federal suit seeking to be allowed to return to the classroom in September.

“I certainly wouldn’t ever want to expose my students to any danger,” he said.

“Actually, I’m the one at greater risk. A person with AIDS has no immune system to fight off diseases, and you know how many kids come to school with things like measles and chicken pox and other diseases.”

AIDS patients, he said, contract “diseases that people who don’t have AIDS just never get.”

He noted that Dr. Thomas Prendergast, chief of the disease control division of the county Health Care Agency, has certified that the teacher poses no threat to students or others. Prendergast’s office Tuesday said the doctor this week sent a letter to the county education department saying “there are no medical or public health contra indications for his return to the classroom setting.”

Prendergast and other public health officials have stressed that AIDS is not spread by casual contact. The have said the disease is caused by a virus that is communicable only by exchange of body fluids, the common use of a needle or through blood products.

The teacher said he has told his parents that he has AIDS. “They took it about as well as they took my telling them about my homosexuality,” he said, indicating that their response was one of understanding.

He conceded that if the federal court rules in his favor, he will probably face some parental or student hostility, partly because of “ignorance about the disease” and partly because of his homosexuality.

Others’ fear of homosexuals “is something I’ve faced pretty much all my life,” he said. “It’s taken me a long time to deal with that on my own. It hasn’t been an issue up to this point.”

Although the teacher said he was ready to meet the challenges, “I’m certainly not an activist.”

“People who know me well have known for a long time that I’m gay, but it was never brought out, it was never that important. They know that I’m a good teacher. There has never been any fear of my molesting any children.

“But there are some parents who’ve never had this issue enter their mind, and now it will. And it may surprise them, in view of my background and record and the quality of my work.”

His students, who range in age from 7 to 19, suffer from their handicaps and need special help, he said.

“I don’t want to brag, but I think I’m very good in communicating with these kids,” he said. “I understand their needs. I sign (language) with them and get to know them. I love working with them.”

On Tuesday, Rushforth and the senior attorney for the Orange County Department of Education, Ron Wenkart, mutually agreed to consolidate their two lawsuits into one case before the federal court in Los Angeles. “We both agreed that we want to get this resolved before September, and if there were two matters pending, it would just mean delays,” Wenkart said.

Meanwhile, the teacher said he is finding new strength, both physically and psychologically, as he battles the illness that has been terminal for thousands of others in the nation.

“I’ve been told I’ll be dead in three years, but I don’t believe it,” he said. “I don’t necessarily believe this is a death sentence.”