Aids: Catalyst for Change in the Schools

A Glass Booth.

By the late 1980s the AIDS epidemic was significantly affecting school policy. When a Florida school district mandated that a seven-year-old girl infected with HIV be educated in a glass booth, the case made it to the federal courts. In Martinez v. School Board of Hillsbrough County a federal judge reversed this decision in 1989, arguing that the child's presence in class posed "no significant risk" to the school. A 1987 survey on laws affecting students with AIDS concluded that the courts were using the antidiscrimination provisions of the Rehabilitation Act to protect infected students' rights.

AIDS Booklet.

Education Secretary William Bennett, bowing to intense pressures from the scientific community, published three hundred thousand copies (one for every parent group and school board in the nation) of AIDS and the Education of Our Children: A Guide for Parents and Teachers on...

[The entire page is 907 words long]

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