Iowa teacher dies three days after testing positive for coronavirus

A 38-year-old teacher in Iowa died last week, just three days after testing positive for coronavirus. 

Daniel Frazier, superintendent of the Belmond-Klemme Community School District, told the Des Moines Register that teachers and staff members at the secondary school were tested last week following an outbreak of COVID-19. 

Jason Englert, a teacher for the district’s Talented and Gifted program, was told he was positive on Nov 5. 

“We sent him home early that Thursday and checked on him that Thursday night and that was the last time we heard from him,” Frazier said. 

Police were sent to Englert’s home for a welfare check on Sunday after he failed to return his father’s calls, according to Frazier. Police discovered his body and investigators concluded that the teacher had died suddenly a day or two earlier.

It was Englert’s first year at the school district, located approximately 90 miles north of Iowa’s capital city of Des Moines. The teacher also coached junior high volleyball and junior high girls basketball.

“For the students, of course it was such a shock at first. Many of our students had trouble knowing how to register this,” Frazier said in an interview with news station KCCI 8.

Englert was described as a teacher with a “positive energy” and “a lot of energy.”

“He was just a very energetic guy, and he always had a cheerful way of looking at things,” Frazier said. “It wasn’t unusual for me to ask him how it was going and he would say things like ‘living the dream.’ ”

Classes at the secondary school moved to online instruction Oct. 30. Earlier this month, the Belmond-Klemme Community School District reported a “sudden and severe” outbreak among students.

Frazier wrote in a letter home to parents that the outbreak appeared to be the result of students attending “large spreader events” outside of school.