2024-25 TK Early Enrollment Report - Legislative Report

California Department of Education
Report to the Fiscal and Policy Committees of the Legislature and the Department of Finance: 2024–25 Transitional Kindergarten Teachers of Early Enrollment Children
Executive Summary

This report is required by California Education Code (EC) Section 48000.15(f) which was codified through the signing of Senate Bill (SB) 114 (Chapter 48, Statutes of 2023). EC Section 48000.15(f) states that for the 2023–24 and 2024–25 school years, any school district or charter school that serves early enrollment children in transitional kindergarten (TK) must report to the California Department of Education (CDE) the number of teachers in TK classrooms that do not meet the additional apportionment requirements of early childhood education (ECE) and child development knowledge defined in EC Section 48000(g)(4) (full text for EC Section 48000[g][4] and EC Section 48000.15 can be found in Appendix A). It additionally requires that the CDE report this information to the California State Legislature and the California Department of Finance.

An early enrollment child is a child whose fourth birthday falls between June 3 and September 1 preceding the school year in which they are enrolled (EC Section 48000.15 [b][4]). In order to admit early enrollment children in a TK classroom, school districts and charters must follow lower adult-to-child ratios and class sizes, and prioritize meeting the additional TK teacher requirements for these classrooms (EC Section 48000.15[d]), the latter of which is the focus of this report.

To meet the reporting requirements of EC Section 48000.15(f), the CDE surveyed 1,464 school districts and charter schools with TK programs to request the number of TK teachers of early enrollment children that both did and did not meet the requirements of EC Section 48000(g)(4) in the 2024–25 school year. Of the 952 local educational agencies (LEAs) that responded to this survey, school districts reported 47 of the 504 TK teachers of early enrollment children (9 percent) did not meet the additional TK teacher requirements. Charter schools reported 39 of the 235 TK teachers of early enrollment children (17 percent) did not meet these additional TK teacher requirements.

This report will summarize the survey findings and provide background information needed to fully understand TK programs that include early enrollment children and TK teacher requirements of early enrollment children for the 2024–25 school year.

If you have any questions regarding this report or need to request a copy of this report, please contact Shanna Birkholz-Vasquez, Associate Director, Early Education Division, by phone at 916-322-6233 or by email at UPK@cde.ca.gov.

You can find this report at the CDE Universal PreKindergarten (UPK) Planning and Implementation Grant web page.

2024–25 Report to the Legislature and Department of Finance (DOCX)