After a six-month legal battle with school officials, Ryan White, a 14-year-old with acquired immune deficiency syndrome, was scheduled to return to classes at Western Middle School in Kokomo, Ind., late last week.
The state board of special education appeals ruled this month that Ryan should be allowed to join his classmates at school, provided that a county medical examiner certifies that his presence would not pose a physical threat to students or teachers. After examining Ryan, Howard County’s examiner announced that the boy’s presence in school would not threaten the health of teachers or students.
Officials of the Western School Corporation district, who had barred Ryan from school in September 1984, said last week that they were not planning to appeal the ruling. Ryan, a hemophiliac, has been able to listen to school lessons via a telephone hook-up since last September.
A New York State Supreme Court judge this month similarly ruled that children with AIDS should be permitted to attend classes in most cases. Justice Harold Hyman concurred with the New York City Board of Education and the city health department that state laws do not bar children with AIDS from attending classes, as two community school boards had argued.
A spokesman for Queens school boards 27 and 29 said no decision has been made on whether to appeal the ruling.
The two boards sought to bar from school a 7-year-old child, who was originally diagnosed as having AIDS. In subsequent examinations, doctors discovered that the child does not have AIDS but has an AIDS-related virus, according to Joseph Mancini, a spokesman for the city board of education.
Parents in Queens held protests this fall when school officials announced that the 2nd grader would be allowed to attend school.
In another AIDS-related development, a superior-court judge in California has ruled that Channon Phipps—an 11-year-old hemophiliac barred from school because AIDS antibodies were found in his blood—should be allowed to return unless new examinations show that the boy is contagious. According to medical authorities, the presence of AIDS antibodies in the blood does not necessarily mean that a person has or will develop AIDS.
The judge said that if a county health examiner finds that Channon poses no threat to other children, he will send the boy back to school.
The boy has been tutored at home in El Toro since September.
Study Agrees
These decisions to allow children with AIDS to attend school follow the publication of new research findings strengthening the medical community’s belief that the AIDS virus is not transferred through casual contact.
The New England Journal of Medicine reported last month findings from a study of 100 families of AIDS victims, which showed that relatives of the AIDS patients exhibited no signs of having the AIDS virus, despite close and constant contact with the patient. The journal article disclosed that some of the family members had shared toothbrushes with AIDS victims and had other forms of close but nonsexual contact.
