Has Anyone Worked For California Virtual Academies? A Teacher And Parent Shares The Real Story
Last Tuesday, I was sitting at my scuffed kitchen desk at 7:45 a.m., wiping oat milk splashes off my keyboard, waiting for my first 3rd grade homeroom check-in to pop up on my screen. My phone buzzed under a stack of graded math worksheets, and it was a text from Lisa, a mom from my neighborhood who I’d met at a 5th grade birthday party a few months back: “Has anyone actually worked for California Virtual Academies? I’m seeing all these terrible mixed reviews online and I’m this close to pulling my son out of our local elementary because of his social anxiety. Can you tell me the unfiltered truth?”
I get this text at least once a month. Six years ago, I was in Lisa’s shoes. My oldest son, Jax, was 12 and in 7th grade at our local public middle school in North County San Diego. He’d been bullied for years over his stutter, and by October of that year, he was throwing up every morning before school, refusing to get out of bed. We switched him classes, met with the counselor three times a month, nothing changed. That’s when a friend told us about California Virtual Academies, or CAVA, the free public online charter school. We enrolled him a week later, and never looked back for our family. A year later, when I was looking for remote work that fit around my younger son’s asthma appointments, I applied to be a homeroom teacher. I got my preliminary credential through their program, and I’ve been working there ever since.
When I tell people that, the questions start pouring out fast. Is it as bad as the Google reviews say? Is it as unstructured as people claim? Can you actually make a living working there as a teacher? I never give a one-word yes or no, because it’s not that kind of school. It fits some people perfectly, and it’s a terrible fit for others.
Last year, I had a 3rd grade student who competed in elite level gymnastics, training 25 hours a week out of a gym in Oceanside. She does her reading and math at 6 a.m. before practice, and wraps up any unfinished work after dinner. She can take a full day off for a competition without falling behind, because all her lessons are recorded and she can make up work on the weekend. That’s something no traditional public school could ever offer her, and she’s thriving. I also have a student with severe Crohn’s disease who misses two to three weeks of school every few months for procedures. At his old school, he’d come back to a backpack full of worksheets and tests he’d missed, and he’d be playing catch up for months. At CAVA, he just pauses where he left off, and checks back in when he’s feeling up to it. That’s the good side no one talks about in the angry viral reviews.
But I’m not here to sell anyone on it. The most common complaint I see online is that it requires too much parent work for elementary kids, and that’s 100% true. I tell every parent who asks that for K-5, you need a learning coach who can put in 3 to 4 hours a day, sitting with your kid, helping them through assignments, logging their attendance. If both you and your partner work full time outside the home, and you don’t have a trusted caregiver who can fill that role, CAVA elementary is not going to work. I had a parent two years ago who was an ER nurse working 12-hour shifts, she enrolled her 2nd grader thinking the school would be self-directed. Her son fell three months behind in reading in one semester, and even with weekly 30 minute check-ins with me and our intervention specialist, there was only so much we could do over a screen with a 7 year old who was alone after school. They ended up moving him back to traditional school mid-year, and that was the right call for them.
For people asking about working there as a teacher, the same “it depends” rule applies. I love that I can set my own core hours. I can leave my desk at 2:30 p.m. to pick up my younger son from soccer practice, I never have to supervise a lunch line or sit through a two hour after-school staff meeting about dress codes. Pay is comparable to most district public schools in California, and I get full health benefits, which is more than I can say for most remote tutoring jobs I’ve had. But it’s not all flexible work days in sweatpants. I’m on camera for at least four hours a day, grading and answering parent emails for another two or three. Some semesters I get a caseload of 35 elementary kids, and I end up working 10 hour days to keep up with everything. It can be lonely, too. I don’t get to chat with other teachers by the copier between classes, so if I don’t intentionally schedule weekly coffee with my teacher friends who work nearby, I can go days without talking to another adult in person. That’s a big adjustment a lot of new teachers don’t expect.
When Lisa came over that night, she brought lemon bars, and my golden retriever spent the whole visit begging for crumbs under the table. She told me her son, 10 year old Milo, has been having panic attacks at recess, and he’s starting to refuse to go to school. She works part-time as a graphic designer from home, and can shift most of her meetings to after 3 p.m. to make time for his school work. I gave her three concrete things to do before she applied: first, block off 3 ½ hours every day for a week, and sit with Milo doing learning activities at home, to see if that schedule actually fits her work flow. Second, email the 4th grade lead teacher for our local CAVA branch to ask for 10 minutes to chat through any questions she has. Most of us are happy to talk, because we’d rather you know what you’re getting into than enroll and drop out a month later. Third, if she does enroll, plan a weekly in-person playdate for Milo with other kids from their local homeschool co-op, to make sure he gets the social time he needs.
She texted me last week that she turned in her enrollment application for next semester. It might work for them, it might not. Some of my teacher coworkers quit after a year because they missed being in a classroom. Some families leave after a semester because it just doesn’t fit. I don’t tell anyone it’s the best choice, just that it’s a real choice for people who don’t fit the traditional school mold, and that’s what I’ve learned working and parenting through CAVA.
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