"We're prepared to open another site if demand exceeds that," Blythe said.
Doug Provencio of San Francisco, who is parent to a November-born four-year-old, told Tintocalis that he feels lucky to have placed his daughter in a pre-school program though his employer, as he does not feel the new plan for limited trans-K classes will be sufficient.
"Almost everybody else is not going to be that lucky and I don’t know how they're going to fit 400 kids into what right now is 40-80 spots," he said. "That group of kids who are born in the month my daughter was were sacrificed.
"I think it would be better if they'd stuck with their original plan, which is offering classes at the regular elementary schools. The district does not seem to have planned this out very well. The state legislator who offered the bill in the first place does not seem to have really planned for what would happen if there were doubts about the funding. The governor hasn't done a good job with this. What they really need is pre-school for every kid in California, so this wouldn't be an issue."
In January, I talked to Ana Tintocalis about the effect of Gov. Brown's budget proposal on education. Here's what she said about the potential end of the state's transitional kindergarten program, legislation that was sponsored by State Senator Joe Simitian (D - Palo Alto) and signed by Gov.Schwarzenegger in 2010:
The governor estimates $225 million a year would be saved by eliminating transitional kindergarten. Currently, there's a state law that requires school districts to start phasing transitional kindergarten in over a three-year period. Many people call this a two-year kindergarten program.
The program came out of the current thinking among education reformers that you need to really look at the early grades, the building blocks of learning, to figure out what students really need. Thus, a really high-quality kindergarten program is important.
Transitional kindergarten is essentially a new grade, created for students too young to be in traditional kindergarten but too old to be in pre-school. Students who turn five years old by Sept 1 in any school year qualify to enroll in these transitional classes. The recommendation is that kids who qualify should go, though it isn't required.
But now the governor is calling for, basically, the revocation of this state law. A lot of districts are already piloting these programs, and now they're being told they won't have the money to keep those classes intact if Brown's proposal goes through. And a number of districts, including Sacramento, San Francisco and Oakland have already rolled out these classes as part of a pilot program.
For many parents who don't quality for a state pre-school program or don't have the money for private school, that will be a hardship.