Student With Herpes Spurs Class Boycott

SACRAMENTO —  Although medical authorities say a retarded 4-year-old boy with a herpes-related virus poses no danger to his schoolmates at a Sacramento elementary school, a protest by parents entered its third day Wednesday with picketing and a class boycott.

About 150 children were held out of school Wednesday--33% of the enrollment. That is nearly three times the normal absentee rate.

The protest began Monday, when several dozen parents picketed in front of Ethel Phillips Elementary School and 201 students were reported absent. The school board reported 178 absences Tuesday.

Picketing was dampened by a rainstorm Wednesday and only three protesting parents showed up.

The child, entered in a preschool special education class, suffers from cytomegalovirus (CMV), an illness that doctors say is common and non-threatening, except to pregnant women. Contracting the virus during pregnancy can result in birth defects or stillbirth.

“This is an issue that’s gotten blown way out of proportion,” said Dr. Kenneth Herrmann, chief virologist at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. “It (the virus) is common in children. When we do surveys of elementary age children, 50% or more have antibodies of CMV, indicating they’ve had CMV at an earlier point.”

Herrmann added that the transmissibility of the virus is fairly small, and there is “essentially no risk to normal children to be in contact with that child. The virus is so common and so benign that it’s not worthy of being overly worried about.”

Word of the child’s ailment began circulating two months ago when a pregnant special education teacher learned that he would be joining her class. He did not enter the program until Monday, after the woman went on maternity leave.

The mother of the infected child said she hesitated to enroll her son at the school because she feared that he would be treated unfairly, but changed her mind and entered him in the special education program in January.

The school’s principal, Jean Nix, said she shares the concerns of the parents, but is mainly concerned with the many children who are boycotting the classroom.

“Our job is to educate, and we can’t do that if they are not here to educate,” Nix said. Meanwhile, similar boycotts continued in Iowa and Maryland.