A Montgomery County Public Schools special education teacher died over the weekend from complications related to a staph infection.
Merry F. King, 48, a teacher at Herbert Hoover Middle School in Potomac died Sunday evening, according to school officials and family.
Her daughter, Charlotte Oliver, said King first went to the hospital ten days ago complaining of persistent pain. She was given pain pills and sent home.
“The hospital missed the diagnosis initially,” said Oliver, 27. “She called me again and said she was hurting all over and on Tuesday (Dec. 3) she was admitted.”
It was not clear when or how King contracted the illness, her daughter said. “I wish (health officials) could pinpoint it, but unfortunately they really don’t know,” she said.
School administrators sent a letter home with students Monday linking the death to complications from MRSA, a form of staph infection.
“As a school family, we will pull together to help our students and each other cope with this terrible loss,” Hoover Principal Billie-Jean Bensen wrote in the letter.
Grief counselors will be available to help students, Bensen wrote.
Oliver also worried about the impact on her mother’s special-ed students. “She had a very special connection with her children. For an autistic child to understand this death, that is going to be difficult.”
King’s death is the first reported in the county among either public school educators or students.
It comes two months after methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a staph bacteria resistant to antibiotics, began a rapid, yet seemingly random spread in the county, infectingat least 39 students or staff at 31 schools.
There are four active cases among county school students, one each at Northwest High and Germantown Elementary and two at Arcola Elementary, said school spokeswoman Kate Harrison.
“The school is taking this very, very seriously,” Hoover Parents and Teachers Association President Geri Shapiro said Monday. “Her classroom is being sanitized.”
News of King’s death raised fears among some parents.
“It’s so unusual that it’s frightening but the odds of it happening are so small,” Diana Conway, who has two children at Hoover, said Monday.
Oliver, an only child, remembered her mother as someone who spent her life in service to others, as an Army veteran and later as a teacher.
“She was very good at teaching. It was what she lived to do,” Oliver said.
