News Room: Education

For decades, millions of Californians with children who have fall birthdays have struggled over whether to pack their 4-year-olds off to kindergarten – or hold them back because they might be too young to start school.

This week, California state legislators may be the closest they’ve ever come to making that decision for parents, with room for some exceptions.

A bill by Sen. Joe Simitian, a Palo Alto Democrat, would roll back the date that entering kindergartners must turn 5 from the current Dec. 2 to Sept. 1.

Educators hope the change in the age limit will reduce the number of children in special education and those who are held back, as well as help close the achievement gap that divides affluent and lower-income kids.

Diana Argenti and Natalie Bivas, two teachers who presented a petition to Sen. Simitian urging California to require children to be older when they begin kindergarten, explain in an opinion piece why the Legislature should set the cutoff to start school at age 5 by Sept. 1.

Over the past 10 years, kindergarten has become increasingly academic, though teachers still make time for art, music and play. For some children, it is too much.
They try to keep up, but fall behind right away. They keep lagging their classmates when they are 7 and 10 and 15 - or until they give up.

As teachers, it breaks our hearts, especially when their struggle has such as an obvious cause: They started kindergarten too young. It has an obvious remedy: Require kindergarteners to be 5 by Sept. 1. We’re calling on the Legislature to pass Senate Bill 1381, authored by Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, that will make this overdue change.

Columnist Patty Fisher applauds Sen. Joe Simitian’s bill, SB 1381, to require children to be 5 by Sept. 1 in order to begin kindergarten.

Sen. Joe Simitian’s bill, SB 1381, isn’t a rush job designed to plug a budget hole. It’s a sound proposal to phase in the Sept. 1 start date, eventually saving $700 million a year. Half of that would go toward state-funded preschool for young fives.

It all began as a grass-roots effort by two Palo Alto teachers…The two presented Simitian with nearly 300 signatures from Palo Alto teachers supporting a cutoff change. . . . . Simitian introduced a bill and was surprised when it breezed through the Senate. “Maybe the timing was right,” he said. “The evidence is growing that this is a sensible thing for kids.”

Last fall, 24 kindergarten students walked into teacher Keiko Nobusada’s classroom at Oakland’s Thornhill Elementary School, their ages ranging from 4 to 6.

“The developmental levels between a 4-year-old and a 6-year-old are so great,” Nobusada said. “It’s very difficult for that child who turns 5 in November to compete with a child born a year earlier.”

And that’s the crux of a bill in Sacramento that, if approved, would require that a child whose fifth birthday is on or after Sept. 1 wait a year to enter kindergarten.

“Do you really want kids to start school before they’re ready?” asked the bill’s author, state Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto. “The answer to that question is obviously no.”

For better or worse, kindergarten has replaced the cookies, milk and naptime of old with reading lessons and numbers worksheets. It’s hard enough for a 5-year-old to negotiate; teachers complain that those younger than 5 are especially likely to fall behind. That’s why most states have changed their laws, requiring children to have turned 5 close to the start of the school year in order to enter kindergarten. California is one of a dozen that haven’t; here, the cutoff date is Dec. 2.

A bill by state Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) would do more than remedy the situation. [...]

SB 1381 is a smart and thoughtfully designed bill that deserves swift passage.

Editorial:

For nearly all parents of kindergartners, the start of school is fraught with worry. Will little Jack or Julia make friends? Learn to read? Play well with others? For parents of “young 5s” — kids whose fifth birthday falls between the start of the school year and California’s late cutoff date, Dec. 2 — it’s even more stressful. And with good reason: These children are far less prepared for what has become a rigorous kindergarten curriculum.

State Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, would like to solve this problem and save the state some money, too.  [...]

It’s rare that doing the right thing for students also saves the state money. Rather than squabbling over details, lawmakers should seize this opportunity to do both.

Editorial:

A bill by Bay Area state Sen. Joe Simitian would move the state’s kindergarten cut-off date to Sept. 1, putting it in alignment with most U.S. schools.  [...]

In an ideal world, California would have as much as it needs for every program it wants. But the state is in a deep budget hole, forcing deep cuts to all of its programs, including and especially public education. It must embrace compromises such as this one, which saves money and makes an improvement to education. We urge the members of the state senate to stand up against the special interest opposition and support this legislation before its own cut-off date of May 28.

It’s the right thing to do for the future of the children, and the future of California.

California has one of the latest cutoff dates for kindergartners in the United States. Most states require a child to be 5 years old before entering kindergarten.

The result is that California has about 100,000 4-year-olds in kindergarten. [...]

Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, has introduced Senate Bill 1381, seeking to phase in a new cutoff date over three years. By 2014, all children would have to be 5 on Sept. 1 before entering kindergarten.

The question then becomes, what happens to the kids who would no longer be in kindergarten and who have working parents? Simitian’s bill takes care of that. Half of the $700 million in savings would go toward expanding preschool programs. [...]

This bill provides an opportunity to increase the number of quality preschool slots for California’s 4-year-olds – and to reduce some of the budget strain on public schools. In tough budget times, these kinds of creative solutions will help the state save money, while making investments in the future.

Howard and many other local educators support a bill by State Senator Joe Simitian that would phase in earlier kindergarten cutoff dates, shifting the date by which a child turns five from the current Dec. 2.

Starting in 2012, the cutoff would move to Nov. 1, followed by Oct. 1 the next year and finally Sept. 1 in 2014. The bill, SB 1381, was approved by the Senate education committee.

Educators have long sought such a change. [...]

While parents often see the grade level question as an academic or even intelligence issue, Dunton explained that social development, especially what she calls the ability to “self-regulate,” plays just as important a role.

“That is the piece that hugely interferes with overall success in school,” she said.

Karen Richmond, a teacher at Valencia Elementary in Aptos with 17 years of kindergarten experience, agrees and offered examples of the challenges faced by four-year-olds in a kindergarten classroom.

“Four-year-old children often have separation anxiety issues, have not had adequate experience in preschool or a pre-K environment, struggle with fine motor such as holding a pencil and cutting with scissors, sitting still, attending to directions and tasks, sharing, taking turns, not to mention simply not being ready to independently access the academic curriculum presented,” she noted.

When they get frustrated, all the students in the classroom can pay the price, she added.

With an ongoing budget crisis in Sacramento, fueled by a weak state economy, it would be nice if a way could be found to reduce state spending on education while actually improving it. Such a goal might appear to be contradictory, but a bill by state Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, shows otherwise.

His SB 1381 would save about $700 million a year because there would be an estimated 100,000 fewer children qualifying to begin school, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.

Half of the money saved would go toward preschool programs and the rest toward the general fund, which could be used for other educational purposes.  [...]

Most other states require children to be age 5 on or before Sept. 1 to begin kindergarten. It is time for California to institute the same policy to improve academic performance and use scarce education money more effectively.

In response to Palo Alto teachers’ lobbying efforts last year, state Sen. Joe Simitian is proposing a new law to change age requirements for California kindergartners.

Students now must be 5 years old by Dec. 2 to enter kindergarten, much later than most states’ cutoff dates. Many teachers say the youngest students in their classes are not ready to start kindergarten and consequently fall behind.

Simitian, D-Palo Alto, introduced new legislation to gradually move the cutoff date up to Sept. 1, his office announced in a statement Monday. Senate Bill 1381 would phase in the change over three years, beginning on Nov. 1, 2012.

As California public schools faced a flood of pink slips to some 22,000 teachers and other staff last Monday, one legislative plan to fund public education and save those jobs was drawing support from school officials and education advocates.

A constitutional amendment proposed by State Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, would allow school districts to approve a local parcel tax – a special flat tax levied on properties—with a 55 percent majority rather than the two-thirds majority that is currently required.

“If the state cannot adequately help the local schools, then they have to help themselves,” said Simitian. “This is a tool that will allow local folks to make local choices about the local needs.”

by Joe Simitian

“Jobs, jobs, jobs” was the call from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in his State of the State message. No one heckled. Jobs are a bipartisan aspiration.

Turning it into a bipartisan accomplishment has been more elusive. So it is all the more frustrating when the state fumbles an easy opportunity for more employment - when projects have been designed, money is available, contractors are eager to bid, workers are desperate, and yet all sit and wait for a sluggish bureaucracy.

School district officials up and down the state tell me that they have construction work ready to go. But the plans are stalled at the Division of the State Architect which must approve them. Like many state agencies, the architect’s office has required its employees to take three unpaid furlough days a month - even though when plan-checkers stay home, construction workers remain idle.

The measure of the wait is called “bin time.” Bin time is not how long it takes to review the plans; it’s how long a plan sits before someone even picks it up. At the end of January, bin time was 12 weeks. That’s right, three months. [1]

School districts have the money for new buildings and modernization. Voters in 2006 approved $7.3 billion for K-12 schools statewide, and local bonds add millions more. California’s construction industry certainly needs the work. It shrank by more than 100,000 jobs in 2009. That means that school districts are missing a prime opportunity to capture low-cost bids, giving the taxpayers more for their money.

Delays on school projects are particularly disruptive. For work that must be done when students are gone, a three-month delay can turn into a year if the project isn’t approved in time for the coming summer.

Instead of furloughs, state architect’s office employees ought to be working full time, and even overtime. If applications temporarily flood in, the agency should contract out for additional reviewers if it believes adding permanent staff is not cost-effective.

Getting these projects underway is not just a benefit for school districts. When people go to work and contractors buy supplies, the state receives sales and income taxes.

Unfortunately, a backlog at the state architect’s office is nothing new. Last April, the agency told school districts it was reordering priorities. In June, acknowledging bin times of 12 weeks, the agency announced it would hire 25 additional staff and take other measures to catch up.

It sounded good. Progress was made. It didn’t last.

Long term, the state and the nation need to reinvigorate the private sector to strengthen our economy. But in the short term, we need government to prime the pump. Right now, no mission of the state is more critical than job creation.

Few projects can match school construction as a quick way to put carpenters, masons, electricians and plumbers back to work and to boost orders for lumber, concrete, lights and pipes.

Schools are waiting to provide better classrooms, libraries and playgrounds for their students. Workers are anxious for a regular paycheck. The money is waiting in the bank.

Everyone is waiting on a state that says it wants nothing more than jobs, jobs, jobs, yet the bureaucracy seems in no hurry to reach in and grab the ones sitting in the bin.

State Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, is a member of the Senate Education Committee.

[1] The Division of the State Architect recently changed the way it measures bin time. This figure reflects their original calculations.

Sacramento - State Senator Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) was named "Legislator of the Year" by two education groups recently, the California Association of Student Councils and the Association of Low Wealth Schools. read more ...