AIDS Case Unveils Ignorance

The case of an Irvine schoolteacher with AIDS who is fighting to remain in the classroom should be decided in federal court before the new fall term begins next month. The court will be determining only the legal question of whether the Orange County Department of Education, by refusing to allow Vincent Chalk to continue to teach disabled children, is violating federal and state laws that protect the handicapped from job discrimination.

On its face, it appears that Chalk has a solid legal case. And that is really all that’s involved. Contrary to what the county department is trying to portray as a problem, there is no real health issue involved, nor will students be endangered by Chalk’s presence in the classroom.

Chalk has taught handicapped children for 13 years, the last seven for the county department. Last semester he taught in two Irvine schools until February, when he was stricken with pneumonia, at which time he learned that he had AIDS. When he was able to return to work in April, the county department wouldn’t allow him to teach.

It’s noteworthy that while Robert Peterson, the county’s superintendent of schools, is trying to ban a teacher stricken with AIDS from class out of concern for the health of the students, another county official, Dr. Thomas Prendergast, chief of the county Health Care Agency’s disease control unit, says the teacher poses no health threat to students, teachers or anyone else at school.

Peterson and his staff of experts should know that. After all, one of the most effective methods of preventing AIDS, and the needless and groundless fears about how it is spread, is through public education--a pursuit to which the county Department of Education is ostensibly dedicated. Its misguided effort to keep a teacher with AIDS out of the classroom is a lesson in ignorance and intolerance that has no place in any job situation, least of all in a school setting.

It is a well-known medical fact that AIDS cannot be transmitted by casual contact. But the irrational fear of AIDS is certainly spread by ignorance. It is that kind of ignorance, not Vincent Chalk, that county educators ought to be trying to keep out of the classroom.