Principal Wants to Reschedule Navajo Students’ Visit : Health: Their trip to a Northridge school was canceled over fears of a mystery ailment.

The principal of a private school said Wednesday she wants to reschedule a trip by Navajo schoolchildren to Los Angeles and help raise money for their travel expenses.

Twenty-seven students from the Chinle Primary School on the Navajo Indian Reservation in Arizona flew back to Phoenix Tuesday after their scheduled meeting with pen pals from Abraham Joshua Heschel Day School in Northridge was canceled due to fears that a mysterious respiratory ailment, which has broken out on the reservation, may be contagious.

The illness, which shuts down the lungs, has killed 13 people, mostly with ties to the reservation in northwest New Mexico and northeast Arizona.

Some health officials criticized the decision to cancel the meeting, saying there is no evidence that the disease can be transmitted among schoolchildren. Chinle teachers and volunteers who made the journey said they were caught by surprise and attested to the health of the Navajo children.

Jane Ulman, a parent of a third-grader at Heschel and a volunteer for the exchange program, said Wednesday that when the outbreak is over, the school wants the Chinle third-graders to return. Ulman added that the pen-pal program will continue.

“We are still planning to go (to Chinle) with next year’s third grade,” she said.

Heschel Principal Shirley Levine held an assembly Wednesday at which students discussed raising funds to fly Chinle students back to Northridge.

“We hope to do it. It’s in the talking stage. It’s not definitive,” she said.

The two schools have held exchanges for the last six years. Chinle students flew into San Diego to sightsee on Friday and were to spend the last day of their trip with their pen pals at Heschel. Instead, teachers made last-minute plans for them to view the La Brea tar pits.

Officials from both Chinle and Heschel vowed Wednesday to continue the friendship between the two schools. “They had a concern and we respect it,” said Mary Ann Hunter, superintendent of Chinle School District, a public school district with about 4,200 students located on a high plateau in northeastern Arizona.

Hunter said Levine had called her Sunday expressing concern. Hunter said she checked with local hospital officials and discovered that there had been no cases of the respiratory illness within 90 miles of Chinle, and told Levine. But Levine, who said she was unable to reach public health officials Monday, recommended that the meeting be canceled out of concern for the health of her students. Hunter said she told Levine she “would support whatever decision you make.”

“It doesn’t matter if we agree or not,” Hunter said. “It goes back to respect. . . . That’s part of cultural awareness too--that you respect other peoples’ feelings. We are not going to let this ruin the relationship between these two schools.”