San Francisco to offer transitional kindergarten after all

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.