Private preschool programs see impacts of transitional kindergarten expansion

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At Menlo-Atherton Cooperative Nursery School, Director Kristy Roos-Taylor is heartbroken about her current pre-kindergarten class size of eight students, where she’s been a Pre-K teacher for 25 years. A couple of years ago, her classroom was thriving with a full roster of 20 students. 

This year, she’s already lost three students to transitional kindergarten (TK) and expects to lose a couple more the following year. In January, she passionately wrote a newsletter titled, “Just Say No to TK” hoping to dissuade parents from enrolling their children in TK. 

Preschools across the Peninsula are seeing fewer students registering after the state began to roll out free universal TK in public schools in 2021. The program is designed to provide all 4-year-olds with a year of free early childhood education by 2025. 

Preschools are also contending with decreased enrollment because of lower birth rates since the pandemic and recent mass layoffs in the tech industry have tightened parents’ budgets, explained Kelly Shaw, communication’s chair for Woodside Parents’ Nursery School. 

Benefits of play-based learning on social and emotional development 

Many preschool programs emphasize the importance of a play-based approach to early education. For example, students could use Play-Doh to improve their fine motor skills, which will help with future practices such as holding a pencil. Teachers incorporate hands-on activities, outdoor play and allow their students to guide their own learning to strengthen social and emotional development, according to Shaw. 

“It’s hard to develop social-emotional skills when you’re in a quiet environment,” said Woodside Parents’ Nursery School’s Shaw, referring to TK.

TK curriculums tend to be more focused on introducing early academics to prepare students for kindergarten, preschool directors told this news organization.

In order to stay competitive against TK programs, Woodside Parents’ Nursery School has started to incorporate playful academic lessons in counting, addition, subtraction and writing, according to Shaw.

Other schools are trying to stay true to their play-based philosophy, despite losing enrollment to TK programs, like Roos-Taylor. She said that TK is not the best choice for children emotionally, socially and developmentally

“Teachers love the kids who come from our school because they might not be as advanced academically but they are advanced emotionally and socially,” she said.

‘Teachers love the kids who come from our school because they might not be as advanced academically but they are advanced emotionally and socially.’

Menlo-Atherton Cooperative Nursery School Director Kristy Roos-Taylor

Despite some of the backlash against TK programs, Jammie Behrendt, Menlo Park City School District’s associate superintendent of Educational Services, says that the TK curriculum has changed to mirror preschools and are very student-centered. 

MPCSD is also home to an Early Learning Center for 2- to 5-year-olds, a tuition-based preschool program. ELC students transition well into TK programs, according to its director Chana Stewart.

MPCSD’s early education program is unique in that they embrace a play-based approach to learning, using hands-on activities for lessons on early math and counting, according to district officials. Although not all TK classrooms are the same across school districts, MPCSD states it is committed to following preschool guidelines and encouraging students to “drive their own education through wonder.” 

Woodside Elementary School TK teacher Sonja Virgallito follows preschool standards with the addition of academics. She introduces math and literacy through singing, rhyming and play, adapting based on collective needs. 

By the end of TK, students are expected to know life skills in self regulation, social-emotional learning and self care, which includes taking responsibility for actions, building an attention span and using conflict resolution, she said.

“We teach them how to be in a group, pack up their backpacks and learn to communicate,” she said.

And there are proven academic and social benefits of TK down the line. For example, a five-year study published in 2017 by the American Institutes for Research found that California’s TK program did have positive impacts on students’ literacy and math skills going into kindergarten.

It also found that kindergarten teachers rated TK students as more engaged than their peers who didn’t attend TK. TK has a particularly strong impact on the English language skills of English learners and on math skills of low-income students, according to the study.

Public vs. private early education

Being on bigger elementary school campus helps TK students learn to become independent, according to MPCSD’s Behrendt.

While their focus is on maintaining a play-based education, TK students are introduced to more structure in an elementary school setting, TK directors argue. 

Currently, the MPCSD offers a half-day TK program. Parents are increasingly asking for full day programs and although the district would love to provide one, it can’t afford to do so, according to the district.

Stewart of ELC acknowledges that there are “many options for parents” to choose from and for working families, a private preschool with a full-day program might work better for them and their child. 

At Woodside Elementary, parents of TK students are offered the option for a later pick-up time at 2:30 p.m. after the first trimester. This is the same time that kindergarteners get out of school, mirroring a schedule that TK students will follow the next year. 

Losing teachers to TK programs

Maria Rodriguez, director of Toddle, a flexible preschool program in Menlo Park, said that not only are preschool programs slowly losing students, they’re also losing qualified teachers. 

She has gotten creative in how she recruits new teachers — posting job listings on Nextdoor, which is typically used for neighborhood communications, selling items and sharing interests. 

She invests in people who are passionate about early childhood education but might not have the typical qualifications of a preschool teacher. This means offering jobs to nannies and college graduates, while helping them get into college courses for teaching and reimbursing their tuition. 

“If we’re offering a high quality program we have to have a high quality staff and that can’t stop at just community college education,” said Rodriguez. 

In addition to tuition reimbursement, Windmill School is trying to be competitive in the retention of teachers by offering benefits and paying attention to teacher well-being. 

“We can’t compete with state funding because we’re funded by tuition,” said Jane Garvey, Windmill’s director of operations and admissions. 

High quality child care is indicator for success later

High quality child care is the indicator for higher success later in life, according to David Fleishman, executive director of 4C’s of San Mateo County (Child Care Coordinating Council).

Studies have shown that the majority of brain growth happens during preschool years, when children develop social-emotional skills, he said.

Although sending kids to school is important for child development, many parents struggle with accessing quality care, according to Dayna Chung, co-founder and executive director of Community Equity Collaborative, a Menlo Park-based nonprofit that supports early childhood learning programs. 

A 2022 San Mateo County Child Care Needs Assessment found that 73% of parents turned down work due to child care challenges.

Although TK provides free child care to families, Fleishman argues the programs can be disruptive to the early childhood education field. 

Expanding TK to all 4-year-olds will pull away a large age group from private care programs they are already enrolled in, he said. It forces private preschools to adjust their business models to the loss of students and pushes them to enroll younger students who require more staffing, an issue they already struggle with, he explained.

What do you think about the benefits of TK versus preschool? Write to us at letters@almanacnews.com.