Yuba City school closes campus due to COVID, among first in Sacramento region to do so
A Yuba City elementary school is closing for in-person learning due to a large number of COVID-19 infections.
Butte Vista Elementary School in a message posted to its website around 8 p.m. Wednesday said the rate of COVID infections at the campus is “escalating” and “warrant(s) a temporary school closure.”
“Continuing to conduct in-person instruction in this environment not only poses a great risk of exposure to students, and families, it would cause great disruption to the education program at the school as absences of both students and staff continue to climb,” school officials wrote.
The K-8 campus, which serves roughly 900 students, will close to students and staff this Friday and remain closed through next Tuesday. Campus officials plan a return to in-person learning on Wednesday.
“While we cannot rule out other schools eventually facing a similar situation, there are currently no plans to change the instruction model at any other YCUSD school,” Yuba City Unified School District officials wrote. “This decision pertains only to Butte Vista.”
The statement did not specify how many students and staff have tested positive since the school returned from winter break. Yuba City Unified in a COVID-19 dashboard shows 206 positive cases among students and staff this week across the district, including 30 staff members in quarantine.
District officials said the decision to close Butte Vista was made in consultation with the Yuba-Sutter bi-county health office.
The Sutter County school appears to be the first K-12 campus to close within the six-county capital region, of Sacramento, El Dorado, Placer, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba, amid the omicron surge. All six counties are seeing extreme increases in virus transmission as the highly contagious variant spreads, state and local health data show.
East Nicolaus High School, also in Sutter County, closed its campus in August shortly after the beginning of the school year academic year due to an undisclosed number of virus cases. That closure coincided with California’s delta variant surge.
