As the SF School District Struggles, An Extra Year for 4-Year-Olds Is Coming — Ready or Not
Transitional kindergarten could give kids momentum for grade school and boost sagging enrollment. But it must be done right.
Coming soon to a San Francisco elementary school near you: two years of kindergarten.
State law now requires that by the 2025–26 academic year, all California public schools with kindergarten must also offer an earlier year called transitional kindergarten.
Focused on 4-year-olds, and backed by $2.7 billion from the state to cover the next three years, transitional kindergarten could help California kids fare better in grade school if done right, according to advocates.
This major addition comes amid serious challenges for the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), which is trying to stem a years-long enrollment decline, avert a budget crisis, and close student achievement gaps that are exacerbated along racial and ethnic lines.
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The school board has just pledged to boost student outcomes in three areas in the next five years: third grade literacy, 8th grade math, and college and career readiness.
Left off the list, however, is a troubling gap among SFUSD’s youngest students: their academic and social-emotional readiness as they enter kindergarten.
Before the state-mandated expansion began this year, SFUSD already offered transitional kindergarten at 20 sites. At the start of the 2018–19 year, kindergarten readiness was at 64 percent for all students, with notable racial and ethnic disparities. As with so many student outcomes, readiness has suffered from the pandemic, dropping below 60 percent for all students, and with even greater gaps for Black and brown children.
SFUSD has three years to meet the new transitional kindergarten mandate at all 74 of its elementary schools. There’s a lot at stake: Success could not only close those gaps, it could also benefit the district in several other ways.
More than blocks and movies
As it rolls out, transitional kindergarten, or TK, will essentially be the first year of public school, starting at 4 years old.
“It’s more than just giving them blocks and parking them in front of movies,” says Emily Bugos, who studied early-child development at San Francisco State University and later ran the childcare facility there.
“Play is foundational for learning,” she adds, “even in a sandbox. Put measuring cups in there, and the kind of language [teachers] use, ‘half-full,’ ‘three-quarters full’ — those are foundational math concepts.”
This approach guided SFUSD’s renovation of Tule Elk Park Early Education School near the Presidio, which included a garden and tricycle path. “It’s a low-key, low-stress setup for littles,” says Susie Siegel, a recently retired SFUSD early education teacher.
The combination of guided play, social-emotional learning, and carefully designed spaces can give kids a boost in kindergarten and perhaps beyond.
“Having those kids in a well-managed program will raise test scores,” said Betty Robinson Harris, a 30-year SFUSD veteran who teaches at Tule Elk Park. “[Grade school] teachers can tell which kids were in child development. They know the first day they walk in the classroom.”
But Harris and other educators warn that TK has to be done right. Low-quality early education programs can sometimes produce “negative effects that persist for many years,” W. Steven Barnett, senior co-director of the National Institute for Early Education Research, told EdSource last year.
There are problems at the state level, says Harris, who also works on early education policy for the California Federation of Teachers. She decries a lack of standards for assessing children’s progress and says a quality teacher-credential process that includes TK is years away.
Locally, educators have plenty of feedback for SFUSD as it moves to meet the rollout deadline. It’s not clear if the district is listening.
‘Learning how to eat’
Most of SFUSD’s 31 TK sites are integrated into existing elementary schools such as Dr. William L. Cobb in Lower Pacific Heights and César Chávez in the Mission.
As the mandated expansion continues, some educators interviewed by The Frisc worried that the K-5 schools aren’t prepared for four-year-olds, who are developmentally a world away from kindergarten students.
Siegel, who taught for 20 years at Yick Wo and William Cobb elementary schools, says the district has been pinching pennies by “slapping” pre-kindergarten programs onto existing elementary schools without providing qualified directors and staff with early education specialization. “They shouldn’t scrimp,” she adds.
SFUSD spokeswoman Laura Dudnick did not provide budget estimates for the three-year TK expansion or beyond.
Barbara Berman, who retired in 2021 after serving as principal of Tenderloin Community Elementary, echoed some of Siegel’s criticism. Starting in 2017, she says, SFUSD stopped offering regular support meetings for principals like her, who had both K-5 and early education programs on site.
Berman says she was able to lean on previous early-ed experience, but for principals without it, “specific professional development would be beneficial” to keep up with the latest research and practices.
‘They don’t seem to understand that this child in the TK classroom is your future K-3 student.’ — Betty Robinson Harris, arguing that the school district, which needs to boost enrollment, should be more aggressive recruiting young families.
Siegel also hopes K-5 schools can find enough separate space so that, come lunchtime, the 4-year-olds don’t have to mingle with the other kids. “A big part of their day is learning how to eat,” Siegel says, and the littlest kids need their own space to do so.
The Frisc asked spokeswoman Dudnick if the district is incorporating feedback such as this into its TK expansion. She declined to provide an answer. The district also declined to make its early education officials available to speak for this article.
Pandemic damage
Transitional kindergarten is just one facet of early education and child development, and while some advocates say universal preschool would produce better results, state officials have decided to mandate universal TK first. (To be clear, neither TK nor kindergarten are mandatory for California families at this time.)
Making it happen falls to local leaders, which at SFUSD includes new Superintendent Matt Wayne and the post-recall school board. They’re well aware of the outcome gap that shows Black, Latino, and Pacific Islander students badly trailing their white and Asian peers. The gap is already evident when students enter kindergarten, according to the district’s “kindergarten readiness inventory” that tracks literacy and developmental measures.
The most recent data, from the 2021–22 school year, show Asian and white students at or above 70 percent, Black students at 44 percent, Latino and Hispanic at 38 percent, and Pacific Islanders at 19 percent. The pandemic’s damage is obvious. Those scores were higher in 2019–20, although still with differences among racial and ethnic groups. (See table.)
New data from this fall’s incoming classes were supposed to be ready by now. The district has declined to release the numbers despite multiple requests.
The impact of SFUSD’s early education programs isn’t clear. In the 2017–18 school year, SFUSD kindergartners with two years of early education ranked higher than those without by as much as six points. These improvements were especially pronounced among groups with the most to gain, including Black and Latino or Hispanic children. But the sample size stops there; SFUSD spokeswoman Dudnick declined to provide data beyond 2017–18.
Meanwhile, the district’s leaders must find a way to reverse a yearslong student exodus, driven by families leaving the city or moving their kids to private schools. Public schools are funded by the state based on average daily attendance, and while more kids enrolled than expected this fall, SFUSD’s enrollment decline continued. There’s been a 7 percent drop since the pandemic hit. Fewer kids mean fewer dollars, potential school closures, and more.
A surge of transitional kindergarten students could put a little wind in the district’s budgetary sails. Yet Harris said the district so far has done a bad job telling eligible families about the new TK classes.
“They don’t seem to understand that this child in their TK classroom is your future K-3 student,” Harris said.
Asked about Harris’s complaint, SFUSD spokeswoman Dudnick pointed out a district announcement, dated October 18, that it’s adding TK recruitment to their fall enrollment fair, which runs through October 27.
Expand with a shortage
The expansion couldn’t come at a thornier time, as SFUSD grapples with a teacher shortage.
To add to the district’s woes, the ongoing teacher payroll fiasco has shaken confidence and worsened the pandemic-era burnout. Low pay has also been a problem. Statewide, early educators have historically made much less than their grade school peers, according to UC Berkeley’s Center for the Study of Child Care Employment.
“It’s almost like a demotion,” Siegel says. “You go lower, from high school to middle school to elementary, you get paid less. It’s like they don’t give as much respect to the little ones.”
San Francisco has made efforts to bolster their pay, though. In 2018, voters approved a measure that created a permanent fund to boost wages for child care and early education workers, which is administered by the city’s Department of Early Childhood. This will add up to a $28 per hour minimum wage for early education teachers and paraeducators in the city. What’s more, the San Francisco teachers union recently negotiated a 6 percent pay raise for its members. (Union officials did not respond to The Frisc’s questions about early education wages.)
Transitional kindergarten, with its potential to boost test scores and increase enrollment, will not solve all of the school district’s woes, but a well-managed expansion could be part of a badly needed turnaround and give disgruntled families new reasons to place their trust, and their children, in San Francisco’s public schools.
Josh Wilson is a journalist and editor in San Francisco.
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