When Cajon Valley Unified School District was hiring a new superintendent in 2013, they wanted innovation, change and progress. What they found was David Miyashiro. Having launched digital learning as a principal in Fullerton, Miyashiro started the process of transitioning Cajon Valley to a blended and personalized learning model where all teachers and students have 24/7 access to their own district-issued, internet-connected laptop. In 2015, Cajon Valley USD was inducted into The League of Innovative Schools, placing Cajon Valley in the top 73 U.S. school districts for innovation and digital learning. Miyashiro is one of the keynote speakers at the Lead 3.0 Symposium April 2-4, 2020 in Sacramento. We asked him about innovation in schools, the challenges of rolling out 1-to-1 digital learning, and how his district is actually saving money now with tech. Q: Most classrooms look the same as they did in the 50s, despite radical changes and technological innovations in our world. Why do you think that is?  I think that as long as we have standardized testing as a staple, both in the state and nationally, we’re going to have the same results. In high schools and middle schools, it is very content-driven based on A-G requirements here in California. It’s hard to push upstream against a system that’s so ingrained, that’s been here for 100 years, since 1892. That’s when our modern system was built — 12 years of school, eight subjects, students rotate by bells — and it hasn’t changed in most places.  Q: How did you roll out the idea of digital learning? We put an RFP out to teachers and said you know what, if you are interested in learning about these blended learning methodologies and providing your students with these devices, then sign up. We had 90 percent of our teachers sign up ­— that’s over 800 educators. So the question was, how do we say yes? We don’t want to stifle their enthusiasm. So we said, instead of giving all the devices out at once, let’s give devices to teachers and take them through blended learning as a group. So we modeled the instruction that we want them to have in their classrooms.  Q: What were some of the pain points you discovered along the way? If you don’t have an IT department that is connected well with Ed Services and understands the end users, not just students but teachers and principals as well, then it’s going to be challenging. Transforming our IT department into a user-friendly, education-focused entity took some time. … Now things are amazing. People come and visit and say, “Oh, this is amazing, it’s so easy!” But it wasn’t that way in the beginning. Q: Tech is everywhere, yet studies are saying students’ digital literacy is low. Why is that? Well, they spend most of their waking hours in school. So if school’s not the place where kids are going to be getting these opportunities, then that’s an equity gap for sure. This should not be the case, and it’s certainly not in our district because our kids are digital ninjas now — especially our 8th graders, who have not known a day where they didn’t have their own device for learning. Q: What do you think it will take to scale a model like yours to schools across California and the country? It’s a decision-making process. People ask me, where did you find the money? Well, every budget is a zero-sum game. … The cost of a Chromebook now is less than $200, the cost of a textbook times seven is easily over $1,000. So it’s an investment in the bottom line and will be a cost savings once you reach year 5, 6, 7, because you’re not spending money on the consumable materials — the workbooks, the worksheets, the things we have traditionally spent money on. We are at that point now in our budget cycle that we are actually saving money with the use of technology because we’re not spending on curriculum anymore. Q: What new technologies are you excited about right now? We’re in the midst of establishing a formal partnership with the Myers-Briggs Company … to track student employment and health and wellness beyond high school graduation. And that’s really what we should hold ourselves accountable to, not quite how does this student test in 8th grade at this point in time, but when your students leave your school district, are they on a path to gainful employment? If we look at those as metrics of success, then it really changes the way we operate our classrooms. … There’s a huge skills gap in the workplace. If we say that’s K-12’s fault, then let’s fix that. And really it’s setting the goal post farther back — we’re aiming at gainful employment, lifelong happiness and achieving the American dream.

What: A 2.5-day conference convened by ACSA, CUE, CITE and TICAL for school administrators who are passionate about leadership, technology and innovation. When: April 2-4, 2020 Where: Hyatt Regency Sacramento Cost: $479; $239 one-day registration Register online