The longtime superintendent of an East County school district — consistently one of the highest-paid in the county — is running for school board in an affluent and high-achieving North County high school district. But if he’s elected, he doesn’t plan to leave his day job.
David Miyashiro, who has led Cajon Valley Union School District for over a decade, says he wants to serve on the San Dieguito Union High School District board to be more involved in his daughter’s education.
In the open Nov. 3 election for the Area 1 trustee seat, he will face fellow San Dieguito parent Amy Flicker, a parent-teacher association leader and former Encinitas planning commissioner and environmental commissioner. Flicker did not respond to requests for comment.
Rimga Viskanta, the current trustee, is running for Encinitas mayor. She’s one of three incumbents on the board who aren’t seeking re-election, as Jane Lea Smith and Phan Anderson also depart — leaving three open contests.
Miyashiro’s campaign is an unusual one for a sitting superintendent.
Samantha Womack, a spokesperson for the San Diego County Office of Education, said she was unaware of any school district superintendent having run for school board in her decade in her job.
Miyashiro doesn’t think serving on a different school board would be a big time commitment — maybe four to eight hours a week, he said.
Serving as president would be a different story, he added; he doesn’t think he would be in a position to do that, given the greater demands of that job.
Miyashiro thinks his experience in Cajon Valley — an elementary school district with about 17,000 students — has prepared him and makes him a good fit to serve in San Dieguito.
“For a lay person that’s coming into a school board seat, there’s a lot for them to learn,” he said. “They need to learn board policy and state policy and ed code and finance. I come with all those things — which is a benefit to the district, and also a benefit to me in terms of time.”
Miyashiro already has a busy schedule. He did not take any days off last year, and he takes home tens of thousands of dollars in payouts from unused time off, records show.
He gets 34 days of paid time off per year, and last year, he was paid out for all of them, totaling $58,799.26, the district said in response to a public records request.
Miyashiro said Cajon Valley’s board president asked him last year to take more than he had been.
“I do a pretty good job of utilizing my time off; my board president asked me to prioritize that,” he said. “Actually, every board president I’ve had has asked me to — so I’m able to take enough time off to make it work for me and my family.”
In addition to leading Cajon Valley, Miyashiro serves on the San Diego Regional Economic Development Board, and he is president and on the board of the World of Work Foundation.
World of Work — which operates apprenticeships and career-preparation programs for K-12 students — began as a program in Cajon Valley before being spun off into a nonprofit.
Miyashiro’s time as superintendent has centered on career-focused education in the K-8 district, and the district has a charter high school meant as a continuation of the World of Work model.
He isn’t concerned that those roles might distract from his work leading school districts. “Being engaged with leaders in different areas only adds to the value of what I bring,” he said.
Sean McMorris, a program manager at Common Cause California focused on transparency, ethics and accountability, said constituents could see his run for a new school board differently.
“Members of the public may perceive such a situation cynically, given the amount of power and influence one person would have over school systems in two distinct jurisdictions,” he wrote in an email. “Others may see it as an asset.”
In Cajon Valley, Miyashiro has clashed with his school board.
Last year, the district was sued by the state over its failure to comply with state requirements for a sexual-health curriculum.
The district’s program left out required information on LGBTQ+ people and relationships, and after being warned by the state, the board still voted against updates that would have brought it into compliance. Miyashiro then asked the state to intervene, prompting the court fight.
A status conference is set for December.
As superintendent of Cajon Valley, Miyashiro has long been one of the highest-paid school district leaders in San Diego County.
In 2024, the most recent year for which pay data is available, he was paid more than $419,041 in base pay — the highest for any superintendent in the county.
He also made $78,433 in other pay, for a total of more than $497,474, not including benefits, according to data from Transparent California, which tracks public employee pay. Including benefits, he made $592,416.
Should he be elected to the San Dieguito board, his total annual income would rise by more than $14,000. In March, the high school district board’s members voted to give themselves raises for the first time in decades, up from $400 per month to $1,200.