The first lesson that the state'southward youngest students may acquire is about the meanink of words – specifically, words in the land education code that may or may not give these children access to Transitional Kindergarten in charter schools.

The California Section of Education maintains that any lease school offer kindergarten must provide Transitional Kindergartenorth, or TK. "Our lawyers affirmed it verbally," said Tina Jung, spokesperson for the California Department of Education. "To united states of america, information technology'due south clear that public schools and charter schools must offering Transitional Kindergarten. This is the law; it's what's best for kids."

The California Charter Schools Associationtakes the position that the law "regarding Transitional Kindergarten does non crave charter schools to offer Transitional Kindergarten." The Association has told its member schools that information technology'south up to each of them to decide whether to offering TK. The State Department of Education has not sent any memo or letters to charter schools explaining its legal opinion.

How Transitional Kindergarten works. Source: Preschool California. (Click to enlarge).

Before slogging through the instruction code, here'due south a quick refresher on the TK law. Well-nigh two years agone, in September 2010, and so-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law SB 1381, the Kindergarten Readiness Act . The Human activity does ii things: It moves up the kindergarten entry historic period by 1 month a year over the next three years, and so this year children will have to turn 5 by November 1 to enroll in kindergarten, next year past October i, and by September one from 2014-15 and on; and it creates Transitional Kindergarten simply for the children built-in between the erstwhile cutoffdate of December ii and the new cutoff date for the school year.

The Act doesn't add a new group of students to school; information technology creates a new curriculum for the youngest kids who would otherwise exist in regular kindergarten. Districts take flexibility in the way they implement the program. They tin can run private TK classes in schools, take dissever kindergarten/TK classes with age-appropriate instruction for the younger students, or they can offer TK at simply a few schools as long every bit it's open to all students in the district whose parents desire to enroll them.

Now, on to the disruptive part. The California Education Code, Department 48000, says the post-obit about TK:(c) Every bit a status of receipt of apportionment for pupils in a transitional kindergarten program pursuant to subdivision (g) of Section 46300, a schoolhouse district or charter school shall ensure the following:Then it goes on to provide the new birthday cutoff dates described in a higher place.

It's those kickoff 7 words that are at upshot in this argue, "As a condition of receipt of apportionment…." An official in the Associates said that refers to how TK is funded, which is based on the same average daily attendance (ADA) calculation as all other students. If a school offers TK, it receives the same amount of funding from the state for each of those students equally it does for its traditional kindergarteners.

Charter schoolhouse officials translate those words to mean that offering TK is voluntary. In a series of comments made in reference to an before EdSource Today article, Eric Premack, the founder and executive manager of the Charter Schools Evolution Centre , wrote that "the law says that offering TK is required every bit a status of receiving TK funding. 1 reasonable interpretation of this is that, if a district takes the funding, it must admit TK students and that if a district opts not to accept the bait, it doesn't have to admit TK students or run TK programs."

No 1 has a count of how many charters are offer TK, simply ane of the largest charter operators in California, Aspire Public Schools , has decided to hold off a year and offering TK next fall. Aspire has 12,000 students in 34 public lease schools in California; the bulk of which are elementary or 1000-eight schools.

"Aspire'southward understanding is that Transitional Kindergarten is non currently a requirement for lease schools in California. Nosotros plan to offer a Transitional Kindergarten program in 2013-xiv and look frontward to the opportunity to partner with students and families even earlier every bit we work together to set up each of our students for college," said Elise Darwish, Aspire'southward master academic officeholder, in an email.

Vielka McFarlane, the president and CEO of Celerity Educational Group, which operates eight schools in Southern California, said their legal department concurred with the California Charter Schools Association'southward reading of the law. But Celerity is offer TK at all of its schools. "We're choosing to do it because of the community we serve," said McFarlane.

Precipitateness is the grouping that successfully took its petition for a charter school in Compton, one of the worst-performing districts in the country, to the board of the Los Angeles Canton Role of Teaching after the Compton school board rejected it. At all but one of its schools, between 98 and 100 percentage of the students authorize for free and reduced-price lunches, a measure of economical hardship. Information technology's about 90 percent at the other school. "If we didn't offer information technology those children would accept to wait another year. Some kids demand as much exposure to schoolhouse and school standards every bit they tin can get, so this would be detrimental to them," McFarlane said.

Concluding year, there were almost 30,200 kindergarten students enrolled in 514 charter schools throughout the state. The Section of Education doesn't have figures on how many of those children would have been candidates for TK, or how many charters are offering TK this year, and the department isn't aggressively monitoring the situation. Jung said that unless someone files a complaint, the Section can't address it. "It'southward unfortunate that they're not offering it," she said.  "This is an effect that may have to be resolved past a judge."

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