new charter school to see construction in southern arizona

Plans have been announced for the construction of a new charter elementary school that will go up on currently vacant desert land in Buckeye, Arizona.

The non-profit Edkey, Incorporated, which is based in nearby Mesa, says it wants to build what it calls a “high-performing” school on just under 9 acres southwest of the intersection of Interstate 10 and Verrado Way.

Earlier this year Edkey purchased the site, which is within the larger 63-acre Buckeye Parkway Center business park, for just under $3 million.

The company, which is also known as Sequoia Charter Schools, already has 14 other schools in full operation, primarily in central and southern Arizona.

Late last year Edkey announced plans to build a 14,000 square-foot addition to its Sequoia Pathway Academy campus in Maricopa.

As designed, the new school will be built to service students both in Buckeye and Verrado, some 12 miles to the northeast.

The new Buckeye school comes just months after the Census Bureau called the town one of the fastest growing in the nation, with an 8.5 percent population increase adding 8,000 new residents to the previously reported 74,300.
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Those same statistics, according to the newspaper West Valley News, show that at least a third of Buckeye’s population today is made up of people under the age of 19.

​By Garry Boulard

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