A triad of tragedies has struck the Cherry Creek School District in Colorado — and officials are vowing to get to the bottom of it.
KDVR-TV reported Thursday that Scott Nash, a Willow Creek Elementary School physical education teacher and freshman baseball coach, died over the weekend.
The cause of Nash’s death has not been released.
It’s a genuine tragedy any way you slice it, but the entire situation ventured into “fact is stranger than fiction” territory given that there were two other deaths in the same school district over the same weekend.
One of them was Maddie Schmidt, a teacher at the integrated learning center for Eaglecrest High School in the metropolitan Denver district.
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Following her death, the Arapahoe County Public Health Department told the district that she appeared to have had “symptoms consistent with bacterial meningitis.”
According to KDVR, Judith Geoffroy, a para at the same integrated learning center where Schmidt taught, also died over the weekend.
Eaglecrest Principal Gwen Hansen-Vigil sent a letter to students and parents about their deaths, the report said.
Would you send your child back to this school district?
Yes: 0% (0 Votes)
No: 100% (1 Votes)
It said both Schmidt and Geoffroy died of natural causes and the deaths were “unrelated,” according to KDVR.
The district said Geoffroy’s cause of death was still under investigation.
KDVR said it had asked school officials if Nash’s death was related to bacterial meningitis, and they said they did not believe it was.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, speculation ran rampant on social media about the mysterious and alarming rash of deaths in the school district.
A cursory glance at the responses to the KDVR tweet on the deadly weekend shows a wide range of responses:
FOX31 has learned that a third teacher with the Cherry Creek School District has passed away. https://t.co/f1onNZaWBV
— FOX31 Denver KDVR (@KDVR) April 12, 2023
Given that Schmidt’s cause of death has been attributed to a bacterial infection, the school district is taking extra precautions in regard to any students or staff who might have been in close contact with her.
“Those individuals will be offered preventative antibiotics,” the district told KDVR.
A persistent stiff neck, high fever, migraines and constant sleepiness are all potential signs of bacterial meningitis.
According to a 2021 article from the global health organization PATH, 250,000 people die across the globe annually from meningitis.
Eaglecrest High School temporarily closed, but it has resumed classes since Wednesday, per CNN.
