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Buckeye high schools seeing minimal COVID-19 resurgence

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BUCKEYE - With virtually 100% of students and staff eligible to get a COVID-19 vaccine, the five facilities in the Buckeye Union High School District are experiencing a minimal resurgence of COVID-19 since the first day of school, Aug. 4.

The district’s reporting is a few days behind, but so far, the district has only had about 0.005% of its 5,300 students test positive for the virus.

As of Tuesday, there have been 10 positive COVID-19 confirmations among students at Buckeye Union High School, along with three positives among staff. Youngker High School has had nine positives, to go with seven at Estrella Foothills, with one staff member testing positive at each of those two schools.

The district also has a learning center that doesn’t have an enrollment and is only used by students of the other three campuses. There has been one positive student test at that facility, and zero among staff.

There have also been zero positive COVID-19 results in other district operations.

Youngker’s enrollment is about 2,000, with about 1,760 at Buckeye Union and 1,300 at Estrella Foothills.

New district superintendent Steve Bebee took over in July. He said he’s optimistic, though he knows totals will rise, to some degree, as the school year progresses.
“I’m relatively pleased right now,” Bebee said. “What we’re really hoping for is to not have numbers rise to where we have to significantly change the format of school to keep kids safe.”

Buckeye Elementary School District leaders have not responded to Buckeye Independent requests for information as of this writing. That district doesn’t appear to have an online COVID-19 dashboard.

Bebee said a decision was made to not include quarantine numbers on the high school district’s dashboard, which can be found here: buhsd.org/c_o_v_i_d-19/guidance_and_dashboard

With all of the students and staff eligible for vaccination, Bebee said, there is not consistency among who is quarantining at home after known exposure to someone who has tested positive for COVID-19.

“There is concern quarantine numbers might not be accurate,“ Bebee said.
Bebee said he doesn’t have any information as to how many students and staff have chosen to get vaccinated, nor did he want to venture a guess.