School Incident Spurs Changes in AIDS Policy

One month after a classroom experiment with blood forced a group of sixth-graders to be tested for HIV and hepatitis infection, the city school district says it is beefing up AIDS education for staff but remains under fire from activists who accuse school officials of having a “cavalier attitude” about the deadly virus.

“We continue to be gravely concerned about the status of AIDS education in our city. Not only is the K-12 education deficient, but we now know the adult education of staff is woefully lacking,” Marilyn Gunnell, president of Glendale Leaders for AIDS Awareness, told the school board last week. “This is unacceptable.”

The district’s policies on educating employees about AIDS came under scrutiny following a June 8 incident in which 10 sixth-graders at Mark Keppel Elementary School pricked their fingers with shared pins in order to view their blood drops under a microscope.

The incident was only disclosed to the public several weeks later, after one of the students described the experiment to a parent, who became alarmed and called the school.

District officials--who filed a written reprimand against the instructor who supervised the blood experiment--say they have followed Cal/OSHA guidelines, distributing information on AIDS and other blood-borne diseases to teachers in annually published bulletins. But plans are now under way for an education program for all employees.

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The program, expected to be implemented this fall, would require workers to read reports and attend video presentations on the latest AIDS information, and to sign a form acknowledging they have been taught various precautions.

“With all the things that happened in the last month, we started looking at our policies and practices and found we had some things in place that are sufficient, and others that are insufficient,” said Ken Biermann, director of student support services. Doctors from the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services have also offered to help with the education effort, he said.

In addition, Biermann said more hours will be dedicated to AIDS in ninth-grade health and guidance classes, in which students are taught about the disease.

Gunnell called the changes “a major improvement,” although she wants the district to go even further. She said phone numbers for AIDS hot lines and HIV testing sites should be posted in high school bathrooms, and prevention information should be more freely available to students and staff.

Most members of the school board, however, say the classroom experiment was an isolated incident and they believe the district has responded responsibly.

“It was a judgment call on the part of an employee,” said Jeanne Bentley, school board president. “We had a good program in place, and now I think we’re going to be even more thorough. But I think sometimes no matter how much information you provide, it’s still up to the individual.”

Bentley said she hopes the district can put the controversy to rest. But board member Pam Ellis, a vocal proponent of increasing AIDS education for students and staff, said she will raise the issue periodically to ensure progress is being made.

“We have not been training our employees, and we’re going to be looking at it again,” Ellis said. “It’s too bad the schools have to be involved in that sort of personal, intimate form of education, but nobody else in the community is doing it.”

All the students involved in the pin-pricking experiment were tested for HIV and hepatitis at a local hospital, and all the tests proved negative, school officials said. Their teacher, Chrissy Wynn, has declined to be interviewed. But according to school officials, she was unaware of the health risks in sharing needles and of a district policy allowing classes to use only human blood obtained through commercial labs.

District officials placed a letter of reprimand in Wynn’s file after the incident, but Gunnell’s group has called for the reprimand to be removed from her record, saying the district’s lack of formal education on the risks of blood-borne diseases is to blame for the incident.

District officials said they are considering the request.