ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Advancing AIDS Education

A new state law will change dramatically the way districts approach AIDS education beginning next school year. But some residents in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District aren’t waiting to express their dissatisfaction with the progress in this important public health area. A group will gather at a private home tonight to begin mapping strategy to put pressure on school authorities to provide a stronger curriculum that may go well beyond even the new dictates of the state.

What’s going on here? School districts, trying to deal with a sensitive health issue, find their instructors overwhelmed already with course work and under fire from extremists who would prevent even sex education that might save lives. Yet here, in this county so widely regarded as a symbol for conservative social values, the AIDS crisis is coming home to neighborhoods and families in a way that is compelling fresh thinking. Paul Johnson-Vogel, a retired district teacher involved in the effort, notes that some are older parents who have lost a child to AIDS and understand firsthand the critical need for early education.

There are plans, too, to take the effort to other school districts. Will Newport-Mesa Unified and its Orange County neighbors respond adequately to this concern? The county Department of Education is conducting a valuable project to teach the educators about responsibilities under this new law that will require AIDS education with parental consent at the middle-school and high-school levels.

Districts ought to take advantage of this assistance. And most important, they should work closely with the community groups. Indeed, the extent of a district’s educational program under the new law will in part be determined by each community’s willingness and capacity to deal candidly with AIDS.