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Four Marin school districts will offer a year of free public pre-kindergarten classes for 4-year-olds under plans detailed this week.
The programs in the San Rafael, Novato, Ross Valley and Mill Valley districts are for children who won’t make the 5-year-old birthday cutoff on Sept. 1 for kindergarten eligibility.
“The name is UTK, or universal transitional kindergarten, which means it will be available to all 4-year-olds,” Stephanie Kloos, elementary education director for San Rafael City Schools, told the district’s board at its meeting on Monday. “It’s a really big shift from our current program.”
Both the San Rafael district, which began registration Monday, and the Novato Unified School District, which started registering children on Nov. 1, are launching transitional kindergarten programs for the fall term next year.
The Mill Valley School District, which terminated its transitional kindergarten program in 2018 over equity issues, will restart it next fall under the same state-advised schedule.
“We’ll have registration starting in January,” said district spokesperson Anna Russell.
In the Ross Valley School District, preview nights for transitional kindergarten at Brookside, Hidden Valley, Manor and Wade Thomas elementary schools will start in January.
The $2.7 billion, state-financed program, approved by Gov. Gavin Newsom in the spring, will expand the window of time for 4-year-olds who will turn 5 after Sept. 1 to be eligible for UTK.
“It is a phased-in approach,” said San Rafael district spokesperson Christina Perrino. “The window expands by two months every year until all 4-year-olds are eligible.”
The current window is Sept. 2 to Dec. 2. For next year, it will be Sept. 2 to Feb. 1. It will then become a longer eligibility period each year until 2025-26, when the opening will be Sept. 2 to Sept. 1.
The Novato district will have the identical phased-in plan, said district spokesperson Leslie Benjamin.
“Students enrolling in transitional kindergarten for the 2022-23 school year are required to have their fifth birthday between Sept. 2, 2022, and Feb. 1, 2023,” Benjamin said.
The free public classes will be taught by a certificated teacher, as opposed to private preschools that do not necessarily require the same level of teacher education.
“We’re really preparing kids for kindergarten with this new opportunity,” Kloos said. “It will be very play-based, with an emphasis on social-emotional learning.”
The plan is “huge,” said Linda Jackson, president of the San Rafael Board of Education.
“This is a whole new world for us,” she said. “We’re adding a bottom foundation to our education in California.”
The San Rafael district intends to add new classrooms every year at its elementary and K-8 schools to accommodate the extra universal transitional kindergarten classes. If there is space, the district could open registration up to 4-year-olds in other districts, said Jim Hogeboom, superintendent.
“Miller Creek would make the most sense,” he said, referring to the northern San Rafael district that terminated its transitional kindergarten program in 2020 for budgetary reasons. “We have to be careful that we can guarantee spots for the number of children who register.”
Both the San Rafael and Novato districts are concerned about declining enrollment, so the UTK classes could help in that regard, at least for a few years, said Bob Marcucci, a San Rafael assistant superintendent.
“It’s still in the visionary stages,” he said.
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