Meet Cajon Valley Union School District

Cajon Valley Union School District (CVUSD) is located in the southern California city of El Cajon, near San Diego. It serves 18,000 students in grades TK through 8th across 29 schools. CVUSD’s mission is to make Cajon Valley the best place to live, work, play and raise a family.

CVUSD is led by pioneering superintendent Dr. David Miyashiro, who has spearheaded a number of transformational initiatives at the district. As a result of his efforts, CVUSD has been accepted into the League of Innovative School Districts and recognized by Digital Promise and the U.S. Department of Education as a National Model of Excellence and Innovation.

Balancing professional development and student success

One of the ways that CVUSD is able to realize its mission and serve as an exemplary school district is through regular, high-quality professional development for its teachers. 

Successful professional development programs allot enough time to give teachers quality training while minimizing disruption to the school day. That being said, one of the challenges of comprehensive training is finding a balance between teacher absences and keeping student learning on track. 

CVUSD knew their teachers were feeling the strain of this delicate dance. Administrators wanted to improve the overall professional development experience while ensuring that everyone got the training they needed.

 “We previously had to limit the amount of PD that our staff had access to because of a shortage of substitute teachers to cover absences,” says Michelle Hayes, Cajon Valley’s Assistant Superintendent of HR. “At the last minute we were having to call back the teachers that had completed sub plans and prepared to attend the PD workshops,” Hayes says.

In search of solutions, CVUSD identified that they needed to expand their pool of substitute teachers who could cover classes while teachers were in training. They could do this by growing their in-house sub pool, which can be time-consuming and pull full-time staff away from their other day-to-day work. Or, they could work with a teacher staffing agency to outsource their sub pool. 

Why CVUSD finds subs with Swing

Ultimately, CVUSD decided to partner with us at Swing to augment their existing sub pool and ensure they had reliable coverage for when teachers needed professional development. 

Working with us has reduced the strain on both teachers and existing subs, who were getting pulled from assignments at the last minute to accommodate unexpected teacher absences and professional development needs. 

And the success doesn’t end with the professional development program.

CVUSD’s confidence in their Swing subs has enabled them to expand the partnership to cover IEP meetings and even their administrator designee program, in which a full team teacher assumes administrator responsibilities for the day. 

To learn more about CVUSD’s experience with onboarding and working with Swing, read their case study on how they partnered with us to create a winning professional development program. 

And if your district is looking for an innovative approach to finding subs, addressing teacher absences, and keeping learning on track, you can learn more about how we work with districts here.