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TheAssociatedPress SACRAMENTO Federal experts are recommend- ing that California test in- mates for immunity to a sometimes fatal soil-borne fungus before incarcerating them at two Central Valley state prisons where the dis- ease has killed nearly three dozen inmates, according to a report obtained Friday by The Associated Press. A federal judge last fall ordered the state to move nearly 2,600 susceptible in- mates out of Avenal and Pleasant Valley state pris- ons because of the deaths and illnesses. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rec- ommended the state go fur- ther by using hypersensitiv- ity skin tests that could iden- tify inmates who already were exposed to valley fever. Those inmates could thus safely be housed at the two state prisons near Fresno because they largely are im- mune to repeat infections. The experts said that is a better option than the cur- rent practice of screening out black and Filipino in- mates and others who sta- tistically are more suscep- tible to the fungus, which grows naturally in the soil in the Central Valley and other dry locations such as Arizona and Mexico. They project that system- wide testing would find 13 percent of the prison pop- ulation is immune because the inmates previously were exposed. Joyce Hayhoe, a spokes- woman for the federal court- appointed receiver who con- trols prison medical care, said the office is reviewing the report. Don Specter, director of the nonprofit Berkeley-based Prison Law Office, said the state should start testing in- mates as soon as possible. His firm persuaded U.S. Dis- trict Judge Thelton Hender- son of San Francisco to or- der vulnerable inmates re- moved from the two prisons last year. Skin tests would sharply reduce the number of infec- tions, the experts said. About 5 percent of in- mates at the two prisons would be expected to be in- fected annually if no steps were taken, according to the 52-page report. Using the skin tests would reduce that to about 2 percent, prevent- ing a projected 268 cases each year. With the commercially available skin test, approved this month by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, inmates would be injected with a noninfectious strain and evaluated 48 hours later. Inmate would have the right to refuse to be tested, Hayhoe said. The steps the state al- ready has taken, including removing black and Fili- pino inmates, should re- duce annual infections only slightly, preventing 44 in- fections annually, the ex- perts projected. At their peak in 2011, val- ley fever infections at the two prisons were up to 153 times higher than surround- ing areas, researchers found. The two prisons combined to produce 83 percent of valley fever cases in the en- tire prison system, which includes about 135,500 in- mates in 34 state prisons as well as private prisons in California and other states. The same year, more than 20,000 cases were reported nationwide among the gen- eral population, most of them in Arizona and Cali- fornia. Prison infections de- clined in 2012, but were still more than 20 times higher than among the general sur- rounding population. State officials say valley fever was killing six to nine inmates each year and costs the state more than $23 million annu- ally to care for infected in- mates and employees. The fungus usually pro- duces no symptoms, but in about 40 percent of cases it causes mild to severe flu- like symptoms or more se- rious infections. Valley fe- ver can spread to the brain, bones, skin and eyes, leading to blindness, skin abscesses, lung failure and death. A study released in Feb- ruary by the affiliated Na- tional Institute for Occu- pational Safety and Health found that valley fever killed three employees at the two prisons between January 2009 and June 2013 and sickened 103 other employees. CALIFORNIA PRISONS Study recommends inmate immunity test The Associated Press LOS ANGELES California teachers earned an aver- age of about $85,000 per year in salary and bene- fits last year, while 100 su- perintendents made more than $250,000 each, ac- cording to data provided by hundreds of school dis- tricts statewide. The information ap- pears in a new database released online that al- lows users to search and download detailed em- ployee compensation fig- ures for superintendents, teachers, principals and other staff members at school districts, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday. The numbers are part of Transparent California, which compiles compensa- tion data for a variety of public sector employees. The education section of the website has more than 581,000 individual com- pensation records from last year for about two- thirds of districts state- wide. It is operated by the California Policy Center, a Tustin-based, nonparti- san think tank. The cen- ter submitted Public Re- cords Act requests with more than 1,058 school systems, but have so far only received data from 653, Jordan Bruneau, a spokesman for the cen- ter, told the Times. The Los Angeles Unified School District, the sec- ond-largest system in the nation, has yet to provide the documents. "The public votes on tax measures, bond mea- sures without complete knowledge about how the money is being spent," said Ed Ring, the center's exec- utive director. "Taxpay- ers are paying these sala- ries so they have a right to know." 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