Teacher Monica Sevilla leads her students in a circle during a learning exercise in her mixed transitional kindergarten and prekindergarten class at Mattie Washburn Elementary School in Windsor, Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2023. (Christopher Chung / The Press Democrat)

Windsor launches universal prekindergarten years ahead of county timeline

ADRIANA GUTIERREZ

THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

September 12, 2023

When Jeremy Decker became superintendent of the Windsor School District three years ago, he knew he was stepping into a child-care desert.

At the time, parents living within the district boundaries had few options if they wanted to enroll their 4-year-olds in an early learning program. Unaffordable for-profit preschools and tight eligibility rules for federally funded Head Start programs put learning-based child care options out of reach for many.

“There are so many students, so many kids, who just don't have the opportunity to go to preschool because it's expensive,” Decker said. “It got me thinking about a missed opportunity for the school district because we know if a student comes in ready for kindergarten, we can keep them on grade level.

“If they’re not ready for kindergarten, we’re in trouble.”

That sent Decker on a three-year quest to find a way to provide both state-funded preschool programs and open up transitional kindergarten classrooms — which are free to families who live in Windsor’s district.

He hired Jessica Borland to be the district’s coordinator of Child Development Programs. Her mission: Find space for classrooms, hire teachers, and most importantly, secure funding.

Decker thought he’d have to pull from district funds and charge families to enroll their children in their preschool programs to make up for the district’s reinvestment.

That is, until Gov. Gavin Newsom’s goals for early learning lined up with his own.

Using funding strategically

In January, Newsom included $1.2 billion in his 2023-24 proposed budget for annual funding of “universal” transitional kindergarten, an initiative aiming to eventually serve all 4-year-olds in California with no birthday cutoffs for enrollment.

Transitional kindergarten precedes kindergarten. It’s geared toward 4-year-olds who are learning developmental skills to prepare them for kindergarten curriculum the following year.

Starting in 2022, a four-year rollout will slowly increase eligibility, adding younger children each year until all 4-year-olds are eligible by the 2025-26 school year.

When the universal transitional kindergarten funding became available, Decker and Borland rushed to complete the application.

“There was a huge need for preschool expansion and lower-income child care slots in Windsor, so we were a good candidate to receive that funding,” Borland said.

The district received just under $3.1 million in annual funding, to be reevaluated every three years. It was crucial to building up the preschool programs at both Mattie Washburn Elementary and Cali Calmecac Language Academy, which has tripled enrollment this year.

In August, 12 new classrooms between the two schools opened their doors to all 4-year-olds in the district, putting Windsor years ahead of the county’s current timeline for adopting universal prekindergarten.

Early childhood expert Melanie Dodson said Windsor’s success may be a good model for other Sonoma County school districts, because they thought creatively to “braid and blend” the funding that they received.

By combining the transitional kindergarten and preschool students, the district had enough money between the two funding sources to serve all 4-year-olds in the transitional kindergarten classrooms, two years ahead of the governor’s plans.

By using the excess money, the district self-funds the students whose birthdays do not meet this year’s enrollment deadline.

Both the curriculum of transitional kindergarten and preschool are intended to prepare children for kindergarten, so the learning experience doesn’t necessarily change by combining the students, Borland said.

Districts struggle to find space, teachers

While there are districts that do have the money to support transitional kindergartners or preschoolers, many lack the physical space for classrooms, or the teachers to fill them.

“The problem, quite frankly, is that some preschools have spots for their additional children and families but they don't have the staff to hire,” said Brulene Zanutto, universal prekindergarten specialist at the Sonoma County Office of Education.

This problem is particularly acute in preschools, where more and more teachers are leaving their classrooms to work in a transitional kindergarten classroom instead.

“A TK teacher has the benefit of benefits, a much higher salary, schedule, all those kinds of things,” Zanutto said. “Unfortunately, the folks who are teaching our youngest learners are not, in many cases, making a living wage, especially in a county like Sonoma.”

Creating the combo classes enabled Windsor to bypass this barrier. They found teachers by posting on Indeed, rather than EdJoin, the county’s choice for posting its available education jobs.

A transitional kindergarten teacher also has to meet more requirements to teach in these classrooms, including a bachelor’s degree, a multiple subject credential, and units of early childhood experience.

Physical space and capacity requirements for preschool and transitional kindergarten classrooms may limit another district’s ability to expand its available slots for families.

“TK classrooms typically are housed close to a kindergarten classroom because then they can share bathrooms and water fountains and playgrounds that are appropriately sized,” Zanutto said. “Many school districts have preschools on their campuses, but that doesn't mean that they run the preschool. So a lot of times, maybe they're renting out the space or it's a joint collaboration.”

Windsor’s new transitional kindergarten classrooms were placed next to the preschool, enabling them to share playground and bathroom resources.

Rather than wait to build brand new classrooms, they vacated the classrooms near the preschool at Cali Calimec and moved those students to modular portable classrooms while they finish construction on a new transitional kindergarten and preschool area, using funds from their state grant.

They estimate the transitional kindergarten facility at Cali Calimec will be completed in June 2024.

A similar plan is in place at Mattie Washburn Elementary.

“Essentially we had construction going on both campuses, and instead of moving the portables off the campuses as planned, we kept those portables in order to roll out more TK classrooms,” Borland said. “So we just utilized temporary housing (to) keep the space that we needed to move forward.”

Not enough options creates equity issue

The road to adapting universal preschool leads to discussion on what kinds of families have options, and what kinds don’t when sending their young children to school, Dodson said.

“It truly continues to be our lower income or at-risk families that what’s available to them is either TK if it happens to be available in their school district, or the slots that are available either in Head Start or state-funded preschools for them,” Dodson said. “We want to make sure those 4-year-olds get into those programs, but they're not everywhere in the county and we definitely have them broadly dispersed.”

Transitional kindergarten is meant to be a solution, she said, but that is only if school districts have the resources to meet the need for early learning.

“The biggest challenge from what we see with transitional kindergarten is that our school districts are implementing it differently across Sonoma County, and that's based on their own capacity,” Dodson said. “To their credit, they're doing with the resources they have.”

Report For America corps member Adriana Gutierrez covers education and child welfare issues for The Press Democrat. Reach her at Adriana.Gutierrez@PressDemocrat.com.

UPDATED: Please read and follow our commenting policy:

This is a family newspaper, please use a kind and respectful tone.
No profanity, hate speech or personal attacks. No off-topic remarks.
No disinformation about current events.
We will remove any comments — or commenters — that do not follow this commenting policy.

Send a letter to the editor