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"SAVE OUR KIDS, KEEP AIDS OUT:" ANTI-AIDS ACTIVISM AND THE LEGACY OF COMMUNITY CONTROL IN QUEENS, NEW YORK
| By Jennifer Brier |
University of Illinois, Chicago |
| On September 9, 1985, the first day of classes in the New York City public school system, James Albano, age 8, found himself inside a coffin instead of a classroom. As James lay in the coffin, his mother wheeled him around a picket line set up outside P.S. 63, a grade school in South Ozone Park, New York, a neighborhood in southern Queens. When asked by a local reporter what he made of his current circumstances, James replied, "'I don't know much about AIDS. I know it's a disease. I really know that I'm sort of scared of going to school.'"1 James, his coffin, and the parents who used them both as a form of street theater, were just a few of the characters in a much larger drama organized by Queens activists to fight New York City's Board of Education policy allowing children with AIDS to attend public schools.2 By the time this episode in local organizing was over, the participants would also include two community school boards, municipal officials, and public health practitioners, all of whom fought over where children with AIDS should be educated. |
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James was one of over eleven thousand New York City public school students who missed the first day of school in 1985. His parents kept him home to shield him from exposure to a medical condition they feared but knew little about. Hundreds of other parents and children marched outside of eight Queens schools on September 9, holding signs that read "Save Our Kids, Keep AIDS Out" and "Teacher's Aides, Yes; Student AIDS, no." The protesting families demanded that the New York City Board of Education reconsider its recent decision to admit one unnamed student with AIDS to an undisclosed public school as part of its newly instituted policy to allow most children with AIDS to attend public schools following case-by-case reviews by a panel of experts.3 |
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While individual parents across New York City struggled with the decision to allow children with AIDS to attend public schools, organized protests, such as the one where James found himself, took place only in two Queens school districts, 27 and 29, districts that had no previous history of working together to fight Board of Education policies. District 27, located in the southern corner of the borough, was a majority white district with a median family income of just over $19,000, an amount significantly higher than the city median.4 District 29, located east of 27 (as well as District 28) on the eastern edge of the borough, had long housed members of the city's black middle class, as well as poorer African Americans. With a median income of over $22,000, African Americans in this district had a slightly higher income than whites in Queens, while in the rest of the country whites' salaries far exceeded those of blacks.5 |
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Perhaps for different reasons, residents in the both districts shared a similar distrust of the New York City Board of Education, located at, and often referred to by New Yorkers as, "110 Livingston St." The building housed the Chancellor of Schools, who supervised the local school districts in a system that was both centralized and decentralized. Each of the thirty-one school districts had a Community School Board (CSB), made up of nine elected officials, as well as a Superintendent appointed by the Chancellor. In each district, the CSB and the Superintendent were supposed to work together to operate individual grades schools, while the Board of Education and the Chancellor made more systemic decisions, such as setting policies for curriculum, school safety, health and attendance. Not unreasonably, board officials in Districts 27 and 29 believed that 110 Livingston St. was ill equipped to make operational decisions about local schools, while the central office considered AIDS a policy issue that mandated a system wide response. |
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