Boy With Illness Linked to AIDS Sits Alone in Class

GRANITE CITY, Ill. — A 7-year-old boy with an AIDS-linked disorder began his first day of school Monday alone in a special classroom set aside for students who have been exposed to the AIDS virus.

“He was really happy. He . . . got me up at dawn,” said Jason Robertson’s 28-year-old mother, Tammie, recalling her son’s excitement before she walked him to the portable classroom set up near the elementary school parking lot.

“He was calling it ‘the big day,’ ” his mother said.

Jason, a hemophiliac, became infected with the AIDS virus after a transfusion of tainted blood products. He suffers from advanced AIDS-related complex, a potentially fatal disorder similar to AIDS that may be a precursor to the deadly disease.

At his mother’s urging, the Granite City-Madison-Venice special education district decided to set up a classroom for children with antibodies in their blood that indicate exposure to the AIDS virus.

So far, Jason, a first-grader, is the classroom’s only student.

Schools Supt. Gilbert Walmsley said the program is no different from separate special education classes for handicapped people, although the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois has criticized it as “abject discrimination.”