REGIONAL REPORT : Kindergarten Plan Disrupts Families : Education: Governor’s proposal to scale back the program has many parents scrambling for alternatives in case it becomes law.

Gov. Pete Wilson’s proposal to help balance the state’s budget by keeping thousands of children out of kindergarten this fall is playing havoc with many California families’ carefully made plans for work, money, transportation and child care.

If Wilson has his way, only children who turn 5 by Sept. 1 will be able to enter kindergarten in the fall. Now, kindergarten is open to any child whose fifth birthday falls before Dec. 1.

The change would disqualify more than one-fourth of the 400,000 children expected to enroll in kindergarten this fall--including about 31,000 in Los Angeles County--while saving the state about $335 million in per-pupil support payments that would have gone to school districts.

Although the proposal has little support among legislators and has come under heavy attack from educators since it was announced last month, the possibility that it could become law has sent parents scrambling for alternatives. With only six weeks before most schools reopen, many parents who had been anticipating public kindergarten enrollment are searching for scarce and expensive spots in private schools, having given up their child’s cherished spot in a day-care facility or preschool.

Other parents worry that their eager-to-learn children will not be sufficiently stimulated if they wind up staying at home or in preschool for another year. Many parents are rethinking transportation, work and baby-sitting arrangements.

Most of the last-minute options strain the checkbook as well as nerves.

Jeanne Armstrong, 41, of Seal Beach is a single parent and a teacher whose district has warned of possible cuts in pay and benefits. She longed for the anticipated $2,000 to $3,000 savings that would come from moving her daughter, Brittany, out of private preschool, which costs her about $4,800 a year, into public kindergarten and afternoon day care. She had hoped to use the savings for a down payment on a house or a trip to Scotland with Brittany.

Now, she says, she has given up both dreams. Armstrong has found a cheaper house to rent and is considering taking a loan from her credit union so that Brittany, who turns 5 in late October, can attend private kindergarten if Wilson’s plan becomes law. She has spent hours on the telephone, but has not found an opening for Brittany.

“It’s been horrendous,” she said.

Jane Gordon, director of Whittier Village Children’s Center, said many parents at her facility are anxious, their plans in limbo, because they do not know whether the proposal will be approved.

“These are parents who have cut bait with their preschool, enrolled their children in kindergarten, arranged for extended day care afterward,” Gordon said. “What do they do? Do they have to find child care again? Where do they go? It’s a whole new ballgame.”

The effect on children from low-income families could be particularly severe.

At Head Start program headquarters in Ventura County, a flurry of calls from nervous parents came in after the Wilson proposal was presented, said Alicia Lewis, who helps administer the program.

They were concerned about whether their children could stay in the government-subsidized preschool program another year. “They were trying to figure out what to do,” she said.

In Pasadena, Head Start Director Denise Knight said most of her parents in the federally funded program for low-income families were surprised when she informed them of Wilson’s proposal. For most, delaying their children’s kindergarten enrollment will be a hardship.

“What a lot of our parents count on is that when the youngest goes off to school, they can finally work or go to school themselves,” Knight said. “If this goes through and they can’t make real quick arrangements for their kids, those plans go out the window.”

Because Pasadena Head Start has received federal funds to expand, Knight said children in her program could continue for another year if Wilson’s plan disqualifies them from public school. But she said it is unlikely that many Head Start programs in Los Angeles could do likewise because of waiting lists of 100 to 200 children.

Stephanie Houston, 30, a single Pasadena mother who has been raising her two children on $633-a-month welfare payments, said she is furious that her youngest, Phillip, might be barred from kindergarten. Houston had made intricate, low-cost arrangements for Phillip’s care after kindergarten class so she could get a job.

“That’s the only way I could get the time to work,” she said. “At Head Start, he could only go for three hours a day, then he was home. Now if he has to go back to Head Start, what am I going to do? Stay on welfare? And I’ve heard about the way they’re trying to cut welfare. What am I going to do if they do that?”

Wilson and his top deputies have repeatedly defended the kindergarten proposal, pointing to studies that show many children enter kindergarten before they are ready. They acknowledge that the short notice for the age-limit change is not ideal, but that the savings it will produce is badly needed.

“We would be the first to admit that the timing issue is a difficult one,” said Ray M. Reinhard, Wilson’s assistant secretary of child development and education. “It is a difficult decision made in a raft of equally or less palatable alternatives. But the stark reality is that unless we bring the budget into line with our resources this year, this problem is going to come back year after year.”

Opposition to the proposal appears to be universal among Democratic lawmakers, and even many of Wilson’s Republican allies in the Legislature have refused to support it. Republican state Sen. Frank Hill of Whittier, a member of the Assembly-Senate conference committee on the budget, said the idea is “a loser--politically.”

“Educationally, I think it’s a sound concept,” Hill said. “But it’s not fair to give people six weeks’ notice that this is what you’re going to do.” Instead, Hill said, he supports adopting the policy but not implementing it until next year, at the earliest.

Times staff writer Daniel M. Weintraub and correspondent Jane Hulse contributed to this story.