COLORADO With explosion of twins, one school is seeing double

Almost 5 percent of the pupils at the school in Colorado are twins.
By DEEDEE CORRELL
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
RUSH, Colo. -- There must be something in the water.
How else to explain the fact that everyone at the Miami-Yoder School is suddenly seeing double?
Twins are everywhere -- napping under blankets in the darkened room of the preschool, sharing crayons and cutting off each other's sentences in kindergarten, crowing about who's a minute older or an inch taller.
"It's the water," theorized kindergarten teacher Christina Keller, who has two sets of twins in Room 120. Next door, Noelle Culbertson has another two sets -- not to mention a pair of her own at home.
With a student body of 382, this eastern plains school has a whopping nine sets of twins.
"Then there's one teacher who is a twin. We have a substitute teacher who has two sets of twins. Then there's a maintenance lady who is a twin," listed Jodi Veros, who works in the school office. "Am I getting everybody? Oh, I have identical twin boys."
What gives?
Tongue-in-cheek explanations aside, it's hard to say.
Colorado's Department of Education doesn't track how many pupils are multiples.
Statistics
Of 68,475 babies born in Colorado in 2004, the most recent year for which data are available, 3 percent were twins, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
For the first time in as far back as the teachers can remember, close to 5 percent of the pupils at the Miami-Yoder School are twins.
When Jay and Nick Dial, 17, enrolled at the school five years ago, they were the only twins.
"We were something special," Jay said. "Now it's no big deal."
Indeed, the school -- especially the lower grades -- seems to be teeming with twins.
Kindergarten alone has four sets, including Timmy Woofter and his sister Tori, the elder by two minutes.
"But I'm bigger," Timmy said. "And I was born with a tooth."
"I'm the one who can run faster," returned Tori.
First-graders Debbra and Norma Houghton are equally specific about their differences.
Norma likes sloppy Joes, and Debbra does not. Norma likes eggs, cooked all ways, and Debbra does not.
"But we both like suckers," Norma said.
They're not identical. "But when you turn around, and our heads are back to back, you can't tell us apart," said Norma, who seems to be the spokeswoman.
Tricky for teachers
The twins with the same faces are the ones who make life tricky for their teachers.
Culbertson could tell 6-year-olds Matthew and Thomas Johnson apart, at least until spring break, when they got haircuts.
"Matthew had longer bangs," she said.
Even when they don't look alike, it's easy for a teacher to mix them up.
"It's hard to remember which name goes with which child," said Penny Book, a reading teacher and -- naturally -- the mother of twins. She started administering a test to one 5-year-old twin, Nicole Masson, that was meant for her sister, Caitlyn, before catching her mistake. "I called her Caitlyn, and she answered," she said.
Veros' identical boys, Brandon and Jordon, are starting to figure out how to have some fun with their matching faces.
If adults mix them up, "they'll tell you the truth most of the time," Veros said. "But there are the few times they'll go with it."
For some of the school's older twins, like Felisha and Callie Butts, 16, the allure has worn off. "People expect us to be like the other one, and we're not," Felisha said.
If they've tired of the twin references, it might be a while before everyone else catches up.
"This year is really something," Book said.