Preschools

During the first four years of California’s new transitional kindergarten program, 167 community-based preschools in Los Angeles County shut down, unable to financially survive amid enrollment drops or pivot to more costly infant and toddler care, according to new U.C. Berkeley research.

The closures represent some painful and unintended consequences of the state’s ambitious rollout of transitional kindergarten or TK — a signature education program of Gov. Gavin Newsom that provides universal public preschool to every 4-year-old, researchers found. The loss of community preschools has meant that some families of children younger than 4 have had to scramble to find other daycare in an already delicate network.

At least in some cases, rather than bolstering California’s child-care sector and serving more children, TK instead appears to be competing with — and even replacing — local preschools, as they struggle to take in younger children, according to the study. Areas that experienced the largest growth in TK enrollment were also the most likely to suffer preschool closures.

“TK seemed like a sparkling idea with very few negatives,” said Bruce Fuller, a UC Berkeley professor emeritus of education and public policy who co-authored the study. “But the downsides were not weighed carefully enough in retrospect.”

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In 2019, before the pandemic, there were about 26,500 children enrolled in TK in public schools in the county. Since then, with the help of the state TK expansion, the program grew to about 39,500 children by the 2024-25 school year, according to state data.

But this growth — about 13,000 students — only slightly surpasses the loss of 12,000 child-care slots for 3- and 4-year-olds at the preschools that have closed since 2020. The 167 preschool closures from 2020 to 2024 compare with just 92 closures between 2014 and 2019.

And while pressures from the pandemic as well as a decline in population contributed to this increase, the researchers’ statistical analysis found that TK played an important role in driving the closure of these centers.

Certain areas of the county actually experienced a net loss of child-care slots as TK expanded. In the Rolling Hills-Palos Verdes area, for example, TK enrollment climbed by 152 children, but the area lost four pre-K centers that could serve 316 children. In the Northridge area, TK enrollment grew by 96 children, but the closure of 3 preschool centers meant the loss of 184 spaces.

The state’s many goals for the TK program — laid out in 2020 by the master plan for early learning and care — include calling on preschools to counter the loss of their 4-year-old students by taking on more 3-year-olds, as well as infant and toddlers, whose parents have the greatest shortage of options. Licensed centers and family child-care homes in L.A. County only have the capacity to serve 13% of working parents with infants and toddlers, according to the county public health department.

But in reality, preschools have struggled to transition to younger children amid challenges such as difficulties recruiting teachers, aging facilities, obstacles in securing the necessary permits and even the reluctance of some staff to change diapers, the researchers found.

A student at Angelina Preschool in Los Angeles practices her letters.

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

“The good news is we are serving more 4-year-olds. But the not-so-good news is that it’s eroding the capacity of community-based pre-K’s to serve younger children,” said Fuller.

State officials declined to respond to the results of the study, or to questions about the TK program’s impact on community preschools. TK costs about $3.7 billion annually and became fully operational this year after its four-year phase-in. All 4-year-olds in California are now eligible for a free spot in the state’s newest public school grade level.

The study revealed another surprising enrollment trend in the county.

Another goal of creating TK aims to shrink income and racial disparities in children’s early cognitive skills. But TK enrollment growth has been the highest in the county’s most affluent ZIP Codes, including Palos Verdes and Brentwood-Westwood. Since 2021, TK enrollment has grown by 50% in the county’s poorest quarter of ZIP Codes, but 135% in the wealthiest quarter of ZIP Codes.

One explanation, Fuller said, may be that many lower-income families were already accessing free child care in long-standing programs that include Head Start, the California State Preschool Program and vouchers that can be used for a variety of care options.

“It’s folks that are beyond the income eligibility cap that have had to pay through the nose for quality preschool. So the quickest and biggest economic savings is felt by those upper middle-class families that had to pay for preschool,” he said.

Up close: one preschool’s struggle

For the last two years, as the TK expansion has marched forward, the staff at Angelina Preschool in the Temple Beaudry neighborhood near downtown has been struggling to fill its classrooms.

“Our 4-year-olds really have been disappearing,” said Jacqueline Torres, administrative director of child development programs at the Little Tokyo Service Center, which operates the preschool.

In July, Torres was confident that 10 of the 4-year-olds students who were had attended the previous year would be staying on at the school. But when L.A. Unified started in August, six ended up transferring at the last minute — some to the elementary school right across the street — leaving empty spaces in Angelina’s classrooms.

This year, 49 children are enrolled at Angelina — down from a high of 58 in 2023. “And it’s been a hard-fought 49,” said Torres. She’s been trying “extremely hard” to make up the loss of the school’s 4-year-olds by targeting infants and toddlers, but with limited success.

Angelina Preschool is located within an affordable housing complex in Los Angeles. The school, which is part of the Little Tokyo Service Center, has been struggling to keep enrollment up as more parents are choosing transitional kindergarten instead.

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

One problem, she said, is that the state didn’t give community preschools like hers “more warning and a ramp-up-period” when they started the TK expansion. Caring for younger children requires preparation, and schools didn’t have time to make the shift before they started losing their older students.

“It has really put preschools and school districts as almost competitors, when really I think TK should have been just another option,” said Torres.

Taking on infant and toddlers

Some preschools have successfully begun to serve infants and toddlers, and the state has helped by increasing payments to state preschools that care for younger children.

However, obstacles persist.

Caring for infants and toddlers requires a special health and safety license from the state, a process that can take 6-12 months, said Nina Buthee, executive director of EveryChild California, a membership association for child-care centers. There is also a new set of fire regulations for centers that care for younger children to contend with, she said.

Many preschool teachers are not trained or interested in caring for babies, making recruitment a challenge. Infant care is a “declining specialty,” Buthee said.

And it’s also a difficult financial proposition. Because of ratio requirements, a single teacher can care for 12 preschoolers, but only three infants or four toddlers. Preschool operations often depend on collecting tuition from more 4-year-olds to subsidize losses from fewer but costlier and resource-needy toddlers and babies.

Buthee said she was not surprised by the results of the study.

“It takes time to be able to shift this. It’s almost like moving the Titanic. You point it in one direction, but it takes a little time for that momentum to shift and for all of these different policies to be able to move along with it,” she said. “If it was as easy just flipping a switch, you better believe that programs would be doing it.”

Preschool budgets tighten

At the Segray preschool program, which has locations in Eagle Rock and Thousand Oaks, owner Annette Gladstone said she has a waiting list for infants and toddlers but has been having trouble enrolling preschoolers. She wants to serve more younger children and even has an empty classroom that she could fill with infants and toddlers — but she says the process is too burdensome.

“I would love to do it, but we just don’t love dealing with the process of what licensing puts you through, to be honest,” said Gladstone. So instead, she’s being more careful with her budget, and paying closer attention to spending on materials.

Buthee said as TK continues to grow, it’s likely that more preschools will find the numbers don’t add up anymore. “We haven’t seen the full impact of this. Over the next year or so we will definitely see more programs closing.”

When the TK program passed through the legislature, Fuller said, this sort of collateral damage of the program on California’s child-care sector likely didn’t factor into their vote.

“It’s a classic public policy case where the policy designers in government have a simple idea about implementation, but in fact, it unfolds in a much messier way.”

This article is part of The Times’ early childhood education initiative, focusing on the learning and development of California children, from birth to age 5. For more information about the initiative and its philanthropic funders, go to latimes.com/earlyed.