Editorial

Editorial

AIDS policy

Fairfax County’s school system is recognized as one of the nation’s most progressive, and its graduates as among the ' best prepared in the United States, whether they choose to continue their education or seek a job directly upon finishing high school.

But Fairfax County’s School Board and top administrator looked neither prepared nor progressive when , faced recently with a five-year-old kindergarten student with AIDS, the acquired immune deficiency syndrome which destroys the body’s ability to fight disease. The School Board had no policy for dealing with students who have the deadly disease. The superintendent ordered the child home, the parents filed a suit seeking reinstatement, and the superintendent countered with criticism, questioning the need for lawyers and a legal battle when the child was going to be “dead in a year or two anyway.”

The lack of readiness and sensitivity displayed by "Fairfax officials stands out in sharp contrast to what is happening here.

On Tuesday, the Rappahannock School Board adopted an amended policy setting out procedures to be followed should a . principal have a “reasonable basis to believe” that a student has AIDS or any other contagious or infectious disease. It is \ reasonable policy because it calls upon medical professionals . for help in reaching a decision on how to react to what is v essentially a medical issue. It is a reasonable policy because it >; permitsteach case to be approached on an individual basis.

AIDS is contagious but it is not spread by casual contact. ; The virus is passed through an exchange of body fluids, most commonly by sexual contact and sharing syringes or needles, less often by a transfusion of contaminated blood like thatwhich infected the Fairfax kindergartener. None of those ■' avenues of infection would be traveled in a school setting, but ; experts believe that the disease may also be passed through • other bodily fluids, specifically saliva, should a child with ',J AIDS bite through the skin and into the blood stream of another child. Since the bite of an infected child poses a risk, ’< however slight the odds of transmission by this means, then ' the School Board must take into account an individual child’s temperament in determining whether the child should remain >4 excluded andTbe provided home-bound instruction, be taught < in an isolated and carefully controlled school setting or be * returned to the regular classrooms. ? We devoutly pray that AIDS will not hit here. But we recognize that prayers may not be enough to stop this modern %day plague, and so we applaud Superintendent David Gangel > and the Rappahannock County School Board for facing the £ issue of AIDS in the schools before it becomes an issue. > It is a sane and sensitive policy which was approved ;■ Tuesday night. It takes into account as much as possible the ^conflicting rights of both the healthy and the sick. We only / hope it never has to be used.