She’s the one who started the fire

Written by: Hallie Thornburgh

One of Ritenour’s culinary teachers, Beth Seibold, has been working here for 13 years. She monitors her students and refrains from having any dangerous situations igniting, all while teaching her curriculum well. Her student, Hailey Ebert, described her as “bubbly” and another student, Kailey Olson, said, “she is super nice”. They both agreed that Seibold is a caring teacher that would “help anyone in a heartbeat”.

In her time working, only one student has gotten a cut and she nearly passed out. The blood was too much for her to handle and wasn’t a pleasurable sight to see. However, fires are a lot different than blood.

There has been a recent trend the past few months where students had to gather outside in their teachers’ respective places, in order to get a headcount to make sure everyone made it out of the building. The fire alarm has gone off several times in the past two or three months when it typically only goes off for assigned drills throughout the school year.

The assumed cause was either students pulling the fire alarm to get out of class or electrical malfunctions. Although, in a more recent event, bypassers walked past the culinary lab feeling an extreme wave of heat, as well as spotting Seibold by one of the ovens. Olson was one of the students and she watched Seibold a bit more closely.

“All the ovens and some stoves were turned on and she kind of looked like she was making some sort of concoction, it was weird,” said Olson.

When everyone went back into their classrooms that day, Seibold was in her own class, no ovens were on, and everything in the lab was spotless. Olson took it upon herself to report what she had seen and that’s when Seibold got questioned.

At first, Seibold attempted to play it off.

“We didn’t turn the ovens off because we were using them every hour,” Siebold said.

There was further questioning about the stoves being on and why everything was suddenly turned off. It led to Seibold admitting that she was a pyromaniac, purposely wanting to start a fire.

“Look, everything was on because I love seeing the fire blaze,” Siebold said. “The only problem was I didn’t have a chance to leave the lab quick enough this time.”

Staff found out that this wasn’t her first time turning on all of the stoves and ovens. She said she “felt guilty,” and she confirmed, “I’m the problem, it’s me.”

The board was shocked at the discovery and the state of Seibold’s position at Ritenour High School is to be determined.