Fresno Unified wants to boost literacy and math skills. Its plan starts with 4-year-olds
David Hunter, a transitional kindergarten teacher in Fresno Unified, describes the optional grade between preschool and kindergarten as an opportunity for “exposure” – not just to the building blocks of math and language, but also social-emotional skills like sharing and getting along with classmates.
When parents tell him before classes start that they’re worried their children haven’t yet mastered their letters or numbers, he reassures them.
“I have found consistently that if a child is with me all year, they know their letters and numbers going into kindergarten,” he said, “and that just gives them that much more of a head start going into kindergarten.”
Transitional kindergarten started in 2012 as a way for four-year-old kids who were born after the Sept. 1 birthday cutoff to attend school earlier. Then in 2021, Governor Gavin Newsom announced an ambitious four-year, $2.7 billion plan to make transitional kindergarten available to all four-year-olds in California – or roughly 400,000 students – by the 2025-26 school year.
In Fresno Unified, district leaders have come to see the expansion of transitional kindergarten as an opportunity to reverse years of academic underachievement in the district. By reaching students in the critical years before age five when research shows 90% of brain development takes place, FUSD hopes students will develop stronger math and reading skills earlier.
That’s why the district is determined to continue growing their transitional kindergarten enrollment, despite some hurdles – like adequate staffing – that schools across California experienced. Fresno Unified’s goal is to add close to 100 more classrooms by 2026, according to the district’s executive officer of early learning, Maria Ceballos Tapia.
“The earlier that we can support (them),”she said, “the better future they’re going to have. We know that for a fact.”
How Fresno Unified’s first year of expansion went
Like the state as a whole, Fresno Unified saw a slightly lower transitional kindergarten enrollment than projected in the 2022-23 school year, the first year of implementation for Newsom’s expansion plan.
The district anticipated 1,626 students would enroll last year. In reality, 1,577 – or about 50 fewer students – enrolled by the end of the year, according to data provided by the district.
The lower-than-anticipated enrollment numbers in Fresno Unified actually led to a decrease of about $400,000 in the district’s ending balance for the 2022-23 school year.
Statewide, average daily attendance in transitional kindergarten across California was 28,000 students fewer than the governor’s office estimated for the 2022-23 school year, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.
Challenges with expanding transitional kindergarten
One of the biggest challenges with the expansion last year for districts across California was hiring teachers for transitional kindergarten classrooms, according to research associate Manny Prunty with the Public Policy Institute of California.
That’s partly because transitional kindergarten teachers are required to have extra early childhood education credits, in addition to their degree.
In Fresno Unified, Ceballos Tapia said that hiring teachers was less of a challenge, due to the district’s teacher pipeline programs. The district currently is fully staffed with transitional kindergarten teachers heading into the 2023-24 school year.
Hunter, who mentors student-teachers in the program, said that last year, the district had more pipeline participants on the track to teach transitional kindergarten than classrooms for them to ultimately teach in.
The bigger challenge in Fresno has been hiring paraprofessional classroom aides.
With a 6.5-hour day including lunch, Hunter said, and starting pay of $15.90, those positions are harder for the district to fill and retain.
That was an issue in Hunter’s classroom last year, when his classroom aide left partway through the school year. He said he knew several colleagues who didn’t have a classroom aide all year.
That puts them at risk of not meeting the adult-to-child classroom ratio set by the state, which, for transitional kindergarten, is one adult to every 12 children.
“If you don’t have that one to 12 ratio,” Ceballos Tapia said, “then there’s penalties in place (from the state). But so far, Fresno Unified has been okay.”
How Fresno Unified plans to reach more four-year-old kids
The district has a goal of enrolling 1,961 students, or almost 400 more than last year, in transitional kindergarten this coming school year.
To help recruit more 4-year-olds, Ceballos Tapia said they’re pulling out all the stops in terms of advertising the new opportunity to families.
That includes television and radio spots, social media posts, and community events.
She said her department also makes sure to have staff on hand at the early learning enrollment center who can discuss transitional kindergarten in Spanish and Hmong with families whose primary language at home isn’t English.
Prunty said growing transitional kindergarten enrollment has benefits not only for the student population as a whole, but also some specific student groups.
“It’s obviously really good for students because it provides an extra year of schooling,” he said, “(and) an extra year and opportunity to identify the students that need extra support, like English learners and students with disabilities.”
Given transitional kindergarten’s potential to have implications for those 4-year-old students’ growth, the district won’t let up on its recruitment efforts to help families see it as necessary, even though it’s technically optional.
“Knowing this information, there’s a sense of urgency,” Ceballos Tapia said. “This is a critical time to be able to enroll their children in high quality programs.”
The Education Lab is a local journalism initiative that highlights education issues critical to the advancement of the San Joaquin Valley. It is funded by donors. Learn about The Bee’s Education Lab at its website.
