The summer season at Coronado Unified School District is fully in swing! While our students may retreat to relaxing days of exploration, our team jumps full stride into the summer race.
In the words of the Executive Director of the California Association of School Business Officials (CASBO), “‘What race,’ you ask? The annual race that happens in school districts and local education agencies as we prepare for the next school year. In the midst of summer schools, CASBO members are in hyper-drive to make sure that the upcoming school year begins without a hitch.”
This race includes construction and rehabilitation of facilities, upgrading of technology, hiring, closing out the year financials, restocking equipment, bus maintenance, payroll, and more.
“I always giggle when people ask if our members have to work during the summer. While it may feel like magic, know that we have dedicated team members in place working hard to ensure we have smooth sailing into the new school year,“ Keith Butler, CUSD Associate Superintendent.
Here’s a peek of what many of our CUSD departments are doing this summer.
Bringing in New Team Members
Our incredible Human Resources team really ramps up each summer to make sure we have an all-star team of educators ready to greet students in the fall. As each school year winds down, we always have different staff that move away, retire, or choose to leave their position due to life changes. This year alone CUSD had 10 retiring employees.
Hiring doesn’t end with teachers, administrators, and classified employees. Recruitment extends to substitute teachers and substitute classified employees as well.
That’s a lot of new positions to fill. Hiring includes ensuring teachers have appropriate credentials, staff members pass a physical, and all employees pass a state and federal fingerprint clearance. Once hired, we invite our new teacher team members the opportunity to participate in a Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment program. Our annual New Teacher Orientation will be held on August 17th.
As you know, we have high standards for the CUSD employees. We work to bring in the best people possible. Overall, it’s a tall order for our hard-working HR team.
If you’re looking to join our A-List team, check out our current open positions.
Preparing for Instruction
There’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes to make sure that our classrooms run well and that everything is up-to-date with the state of California requirements. That’s where our Learning Department comes in. Summer brings the opportunity to order new materials, renew licenses, and stock up on supplies for the upcoming school year.
This includes:
- Ordering supplies for new curricula, such as our math department;
- Reviewing and fulfilling restocking requests, including textbooks, consumable materials, and other supplies;
- Updating licenses for web programs;
- Overseeing professional development for teachers.
Summer also brings a chance for our dedicated educators working on new curriculum to really dig in. This intense process utilizes teams of teachers to write, update, and build out courses. Included are curriculum maps, assessments, and related resources. The last big challenge of the summer is to review academic data, send out reports to parents, and analyze results to see how kids are doing.
Updating Technology
Our technology team goes into overdrive during the summer months to update, repair, and work on projects before students and teachers return in the fall. Immense planning goes into ensuring they can accomplish as much as possible during this time to limit disruptions from student learning.
Equipment purchases play a big role in the planning. Equipment must be ordered in April to be used in the prior year budget. Another big task revolves around updating staff to Microsoft Office 365, giving staff access to their email and files from any Internet compatible Windows machine.
All in all, they have an extensive project list to complete this summer. Their work pays off ensuring we maintain quality technology systems essential to fulfilling our Future Ready Pledge.
Summer is the Busy Season
As you can tell, summer is anything but the off-season for our dedicated team members throughout the district. In many ways, it’s one of the busier times to make sure everything is ready for students and teachers to return in the fall.
Every year, as we glide into the fall season, it always feels like magic that we were able to accomplish all that we do during the “off” season. We know this is all possible thanks to the dedicated team members we have serving our students and community.
