The San Francisco Unified School District, which in January announced it would not offer Transitional Kindergarten after Gov. Jerry Brown proposed eliminating the program, has changed course and decided to offer the program after all.

Those eligible will be students who are born in a single month and year — between November 2 and December 2, 2007.

The program will only be offered at two sites — Harvard Early Education School and McLaren Early Education School — which will almost certainly make it unreachable for some parents who may be interested in enrolling in the program.

The governor’s January budget proposes both cutting funding for Transitional Kindergarten and removing the requirement that districts provide special transitional classes for children who turn 5 between Nov. 2 and Dec. 2. These children became ineligible to enter regular kindergarten in fall 2012 under the state’s Kindergarten Readiness Act of 2010. If the Legislature were to reject the governor’s proposal and continue the Transitional Kindergarten requirement, school districts would have to provide transitional kindergarten classes this fall.

In a statement on its website, the district cited “uncertainty of whether or not California is going to fund and continue to mandate Transitional Kindergarten” as the reason for its decision to offer the program. If the Legislature decides to keep the mandate, the district would still meet its requirements by offering the program in two schools.

“In order to minimize disruption to the majority of the applicant families and to act in a financially responsible manner, the District needs to plan for stand-alone TK programs at sites that can accommodate TK children,” the district said on its website.

For more information on Transitional Kindergarten, please see these related articles on EdSource Extra.

For more information about San Francisco Unified’s program, please see the district website.

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  1. Heather Wilson 12 years ago12 years ago

    The article mentions that these two schools are unreachable for some parents. When you only offer TK in the far SE of a city like San Francisco the reality is that these two schools are unreachable for huge numbers of SF parents. I have an older child in 1st grade at an SFUSD Elementary School in the North West of San Francisco. Sending another child to Transitional Kindergarten more than 7 miles … Read More

    The article mentions that these two schools are unreachable for some parents. When you only offer TK in the far SE of a city like San Francisco the reality is that these two schools are unreachable for huge numbers of SF parents. I have an older child in 1st grade at an SFUSD Elementary School in the North West of San Francisco. Sending another child to Transitional Kindergarten more than 7 miles away is just not going to work for our family.

    It should also be noticed that at their maximum capacity these two locations could take less than half of the children whose applications for TK are already on file with SFUSD. The district never had any intention to provide equitable access to TK. They are, in fact, counting on the fact that these locations are logistically impossible for a high percentage of families.

    SFUSD is also refusing to accept or process waivers to allow these children to attend Kindergarten programs (regardless of how ready individual children may be). This leaves many families with no options for a TK or K program for their children for the 2012/13 school year.

  2. Marija Maldonado 12 years ago12 years ago

    The district knows that most parents can not drive their children to these two schools, especially if they are already taking older kids to another school. What happened to equal access for all children? This is a ridiculous idea and proves that the district doesn’t care about the middle class. Then they wonder why so many families choose private school.