TULARE, Calif. — At a home in Tulare nestled between farmland and an elementary school, Silvia Sanchez is whipping up dinner for her six children – a meatless pasta topped with a mixture of tomato sauce and cream cheese for some, and eggs scrambled with lightly fried corn tortillas for the rest.
A timely and accommodating dinner wouldn’t have been possible without her older kids watching the little ones. Her 13-year-old daughter warmed up formula for the baby, while the boys occupied her toddler.
“I kind of have to have them help me,” Sanchez said. “If not, I wouldn't be able to do things around here.”
Soon that help won’t be as necessary though, because she’s enrolling her three-year-old daughter in transitional kindergarten next year. She hopes it will help her toddler become more independent.
“I think that's going to give her the time to build up to kindergarten expectations,” she said.
“Universal” transitional kindergarten launched statewide last August after a multi-year rollout by Governor Gavin Newsom. Transitional kindergarten (TK), an optional year of school in the year before kindergarten, is similar to preschool and helps children warm up to learning.
The program sprang up in California more than a decade ago, but this school year is different. School districts statewide are now required to offer transitional kindergarten for free to all four-year-olds whose parents choose to enroll them. The initiative aims to ensure high-quality, early childhood education for children no matter their income.
Researchers say TK can regulate social and emotional health, improve brain development for young learners and save thousands of dollars for families who would have otherwise enrolled their children in private preschool or daycare.
But it may not be making as much of an impact on the state’s youngest learners as it could. A KVPR data analysis found less than half of California’s four year olds were enrolled in TK last school year. Enrollment in the San Joaquin Valley was only a few percentage points higher than the rest of the state, with about 45% of four-year-olds enrolled last school year despite 75% of them being eligible.
These low enrollment numbers could partially be due to other educational options that families chose to enroll or keep their children in, such as private child care or federally funded Head Start. But they could also come from little knowledge of the program’s value.
Sanchez works as a preschool teacher at a child development center in the Valley. She said word about transitional kindergarten is spreading, but so are sometimes-mistaken assumptions about what it offers.
“Some of the parents will say [their children are] just too small for it because they see it as kindergarten,” Sanchez said. “I feel like now it gives them that time to slow down and…learn what they need to learn at their own pace.”
Transitional kindergarten focuses on play, communication
Before transitional kindergarten’s expansion, the availability of the program varied by school district, and whether it was offered or not depended on the availability of classroom space, resources and upon parents’ request.
But a growing body of research shows the first five years of a child’s life are the most important for brain development and a child’s success in school.
With the research came a push in the legislature that followed an assembly bill authored in 2021 by Sacramento-based Democrat Kevin McCarty. The bill pledged to expand TK to all four-year-olds in California. By 2021, Newsom signed a similar bill, AB130, into law, which established the Universal Prekindergarten program (UPK) and initiated a multi-year rollout of universal TK.
Transitional kindergarten, in essence, is similar to preschool, but it follows public school campus schedules, focuses on readying children for kindergarten and public school and is generally free - though it’s only offered to four-year-olds in the year before they qualify for kindergarten. In a 2021 press release, the governor’s office said the rollout would “improve access to a good education for children across California so that every child can thrive, regardless of their race, language spoken at home or zip code.”
One study showed high-quality early learning contributed to better academics and a higher likelihood of graduating high school, partly due to the brain’s flexibility at a young age and a willingness to learn.
“There has been for many, many years, an interest in expanding access to universal preschool, because the research is very clear that learning starts at birth, and that children have tremendous opportunities to learn and grow prior to the kindergarten year,” said Hanna Melnick, the director of early learning policy at the non-profit Learning Policy Institute.
Transitional kindergarten is now state mandated to be offered to any child, just as kindergarten and grade school have for decades. When a high quality early learning program is offered to all, Melnick said it automatically becomes more equitable than private preschool.
“You have children who have different exposures to different languages, to different exposures to reading and math in their previous home environments,” Melnick said. “When you have mixed income and also multiracial classrooms, all children do better,” she said.
With that in mind, researchers like Kelly Twibell, director of the Early Childhood Lab School at University of California, Davis, said enrolling in transitional kindergarten directly correlates to a child’s wellbeing.
“When I think about health, it's really the whole child,” Twibell said. “So we're thinking beyond just physical wellbeing…. We're looking at their sense of self like: Do they feel confident? Do they see themselves as capable, likable, lovable? Are they able to form positive relationships, interact successfully with peers, and express and manage those emotions that are just part of life?’”
TK can benefit children’s physical health in some basic ways, too; public schools often provide at least two meals a day, access to healthy drinking water, and a safe environment.
But, she noted, the real positives come from within a classroom catered to a child’s curiosity.
“It's through play-based learning and environments that honor each child that they really see the confidence start to emerge, the resilience that we know is important in terms of education and long term success,” she said.
Many parents are skeptical of something new
Sanchez understood all the positives of transitional kindergarten when her autistic son enrolled in it last school year. What started as a lot of tears and hand-holding at first, she said, turned into a brand-new comfort with his routine and peers. But Sanchez didn’t always know the benefits of the program.
She was initially skeptical of transitional kindergarten back when her oldest child, who’s 13 years old now, was only four.
Back then, the program wasn’t as well known because it was only offered to about a quarter of four-year-olds whose 5th birthdays occurred in the later months of the year. Sanchez didn’t understand what the program was and she immediately thought it was like “doing kindergarten twice.”
“It sounded more like if they flunked them,” she said.
Sanchez enrolled her daughter in kindergarten a little early instead. But she wonders what could have been different if she’d placed her in TK instead.
“As my daughter started growing up, I started noticing things,” Sanchez said, “missing areas in her learning that she wasn't hitting at that moment. So it almost felt like, if she had a little bit more time, maybe she would have been there.”
Aside from academics, she also wonders if kindergarten shortened her youth.
“Would it have been different for her If I would have put her in TK?” Sanchez asked. “Would it have given her the extra time that maybe she needed?”
Other parents who spoke to KVPR also held misconceptions.
Mara Brady, a geology professor at Fresno State and parent of two boys, chose to keep her younger son in the preschool on the college campus. She thought transitional kindergarten would turn into rigorous writing and reading rather than exploration and play, like her older son’s experience in kindergarten.
“He had homework every day in kindergarten, and we were just like, ‘We're not able to do this,’” she said. “We wanted to keep our younger son in preschool, and let him be a kid as long as possible before he had to make that transition.”
A study done by the non-profit Public Policy Institute of California found this was a common belief. The study said a member of a focus group of parents from Kern County also wanted to keep their child in private daycare because they were “too young for kindergarten.”
Some parents also worried about finding child care after only a half-day of school. That was true for Becca Cuevas, a mom of two from Clovis. Clovis Unified does not offer a full-day transitional kindergarten, but most Valley programs do offer full days.
“There's no before- or after-school care,” Cuevas said. “So working parents, they can't send their kids unless they have a great village.”
Many parents said they got their information about transitional kindergarten from word of mouth. But “the word of mouth might be totally wrong,” according to Julie Berk, an assistant superintendent from the Tulare County Office of Education. Berk said they’re helping social workers and school districts inform parents.
“We have spent tens of thousands of dollars on advertising, and when you ask people, ‘How'd you hear about us?’ It's their friend,” Berk said.
One initiative the county office said it’s using is a “roadshow.” Officials go out to community agencies like daycare providers and offer a presentation about all of the options for four-year-olds, including TK.
“We take the role of educating our communities within our county and make sure that there's some communication about it, and we leave resources for them so that they can make the best decision possible for their family and their child,” said Amy Sullivan, the universal pre-kindergarten coordinator at the county office.
Now that universal TK has launched and is offered to all four-year-olds instead of a select few, county officials think it will make information more consistent and lead to steady growth in enrollment. Ultimately, however, Berk said raising enrollment comes with the hefty responsibility of introducing something new to parents.
“This is the first time we've added a grade level to public education in 100 years,” Berk said. “So could [the rollout] have been done better? Sure. Not having a pandemic would have been nice, but I think that giving parents a choice at that level is going to be very beneficial to our families and our children as we look forward.”
Melnick, from the Learning Policy Institute, said choice and options will definitely differ, and enticing parents to choose TK in the end will fall to the school districts.
“There's the initial families who just simply didn't know about it and can be convinced pretty quickly to take up a free preschool program,” she said. “And then there's some families who might know about it but actually need to be convinced, and that's going to be a slower process.”
But Melnick's overall optimistic that enrollment will grow as school districts get a handle on their own transitional kindergarten programs and what they can bring to the table.
In fact, she thinks over time many will begin assuming transitional kindergarten is a required grade, even though it's not.
“I do wonder if TK will eventually be the new kindergarten in the sense that then we just accept that's when school starts, and everyone does it,” Melnick said.
Sanchez makes up for lost opportunity
In Sanchez’s home, the kids gather around the dinner table to play “Uno, No Mercy edition.” Her teenage daughter shuffles the cards as Sanchez partners up with her toddler, Natalia, who stretches over to place them on the growing pile.
Sanchez asks her daughter what colors and numbers are on the cards — using the game as a way to test her knowledge.
But she’s looking forward to Natalia learning all of that and more in transitional kindergarten next year.
“I think that's where I would want her to begin with,” Sanchez said. “I still see her as very small, and she doesn't regulate herself yet fully.”
Her daughter will learn to manage her emotions, and that brings up many feelings for Sanchez too. She said she feels relieved, excited and confident about the future.
“Before, I saw it as repeating a grade,” she said. “Now, I don't see it that way. I see it more as an extension of time to just be where they need to be and with no pressure.”
This article was produced as a project for the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2025 Data Fellowship.
