AIDS Victim Sees Fight to Teach Again as Rights Case

An Orange County teacher with AIDS said Tuesday that he sees his legal fight to return to the classroom as a civil rights struggle for himself and for other AIDS patients.

The Orange County Department of Education, which employs the teacher, has tried to persuade him to take an alternative at-home job, such as writing grant proposals for the schools.

But in an interview with The Times on Tuesday, the teacher--who has never been publicly identified--said he wants to return to classroom teaching not only for himself but also to establish the right of other AIDS patients to continue in their jobs.

“There are some who’ve encouraged me to just go ahead and take disability and quit working,” he said. “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 Orange County Department of Education last week filed papers in Orange County Superior Court seeking a judge’s opinion, called a “declaratory judgment,” on whether the teacher has the right to return to teaching and whether his students and working associates should be notified of his disease.

Almost simultaneously, the teacher, a Long Beach resident, filed papers with the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, also seeking a declaration of his rights.

On Tuesday, his lawyer, Marjorie Rushforth, and Ron Wenkart, senior attorney for the Orange County Department of Education, agreed to consolidate the cases into one 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.

In the interview, the teacher repeatedly emphasized that his illness poses no danger to students or other teachers. “I certainly wouldn’t ever want to expose my students to any danger,” he said.

The 42-year-old special-education teacher instructs hearing impaired students and is a seven-year employee of the Orange County Department of Education. He has a master’s degree in special education from California State University, Northridge, and earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology from Brigham Young University.

The teacher was interviewed in the Santa Ana office of his lawyer. He declined to be publicly identified or to specify the schools where he teaches.

The teacher is identified in court documents only as “John Doe,” and Rushforth asked that “Doe” be used to refer to him.

Doe is a man of medium build and height, tanned and healthy looking, with sandy hair and a mustache.

He noted that Dr. Thomas Prendergast, head of disease control in the Orange County Health Care Agency, this week sent a letter to the Orange County Department of Education saying that “there are no medical or public health contraindications for his return to the classroom setting.”

Doe, a native of Kansas, said he had informed his parents of his medical condition. “They took it about as well as they took my telling them about my homosexuality,” he said, indicating that they had responded with understanding.

The teacher said he likes his job because he believes it important to help the hearing-impaired. “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 love working with them.”