School district says we must enroll in 1st grade, not K
My child has a late August birthday. We kept them in preschool this past year, as we didn't feel they were emotionally ready for Kindergarten (especially with COVID). Now WCCUSD is saying I have to enroll them in first grade. This seems ridiculous, as they have not gone through kindergarten at all. Has anyone else recently had any experience (success or failures) in enrolling into a Kindergarten program a year "late"? Any recommendations about who to contact? We are open to transferring districts over this, but would really prefer to stick with our neighborhood school.
Mar 3, 2022
Parent Replies
OUSD has been very flexible with kids who have summer birthdays. My child’s K class had kids born in July and August (a full year older than some kids). Parents said that OUSD was accommodating about holding their kids back a year. OUSD has been very hard lined about kids born in the fall being allowed to join K instead of TK, however. (We tried to put our kid into K instead of TK but it was impossible.)
I have heard that WCCUSD is opposed to this because you can end up with kids who are much older than the rest of the class and bored. This creates a lot of challenges for the teachers.
If you think your child is not ready for 1st grade and should stay in kindergarten, you will need evidence to support this. I would suggest meeting with your current preschool teachers and getting letters from them. You may also need to find a school psychologist or therapist to evaluate your child. WCCUSD has psychologists, but I'm not sure how you would get them to evaluate your child for grade placement. Have you checked with the principal at the school your child would go to for advice?
Just a heads up that WCCUSD does also not easily allow out of district transfers, and I don't think it would be easy to get a spot in the other local districts. You would have to see if any of the charter or private schools are more flexible, but most of them will have similar protocols. Hopefully you can find a way that everyone can agree what is best for your child.
We ended up moving out of WCCUSD during the pandemic, but at the start of the pandemic I had a child with a late July birthday who should have been in kindergarten 20-21 but who we wanted to keep in preschool to avoid Zoom school. We reached out to the principal of our neighborhood school (where our older child was enrolled) to ask if it would be okay and she told us that as long as she had never been enrolled in K it would be (there were also other mitigating issues with my older child that the principal was aware of). Like I said, we ended up moving (and our new district was also accommodating) but our registration went through without a hitch. Perhaps talk to your local school principal before you register to fully explain your reasoning and need.
Well, kindergarten isn't required by the State so if your child can read/count, they'll be fine in first. You may or may not have made the right decision to hold them back but the enrollment rules are the rules, even if some districts choose to bend them. If a month or two into first grade they really haven't adjusted, then seek the teacher's recommendation to move them back into kindergarten. I have a child whose birthday was 2 days before the cutoff for K enrollment. They started K at age 4 years, 10 months, and 2 weeks. It was fine then and it's fine now (a decade later); kids "play up" when they're with a slightly older cohort. Once in a while we have to remind them that someone has to be the youngest, and it's usually going to be them.