Committee Stalls Bill to Change Age for Kindergartners

A proposal to raise the minimum age for children beginning kindergarten has been sidetracked for further study and is unlikely to be voted on by the state Legislature before January.

The bill, by Assemblyman George Runner Jr. (R-Lancaster), would require California children to be age 5 by Sept. 1 in order to start kindergarten. Currently, the birthday cutoff date is Dec. 2, putting California among a small minority of states with a date so late in the year.

Runner and backers of his legislation argue that many kindergartners with birthdays in late fall are unprepared to tackle the tasks asked of them in school.

Giving those children another year to develop would provide them with a scholastic boost--protecting them from failure and making them more competitive academically with children in other states, the bill’s supporters say.

But critics contend that there is no solid research to support that conclusion, citing academic studies suggesting that any advantage to being older fades by third grade.

After a hearing on the bill that ran late into the night Wednesday, a majority of the Assembly Education Committee opted to stall the bill by ordering a survey of research on the concept. That move means the legislation is unlikely to come up for a vote before next year.

“This is a major policy change for California, and I just think we have to be careful,” said Kerry Mazzoni (D-San Rafael), chairwoman of the committee. “It’s something we need to look at in the big-picture sense as opposed to myopically.”

While Runner and advocates for the California Teachers Assn. insisted that the idea is sound and that the experience of many states proves it, Mazzoni and others said the consequences for California have not been thoroughly explored.

Specifically, critics said the bill would impose a financial hardship on low-income parents whose children’s kindergarten start is postponed a year. While the children of wealthy parents might benefit from additional time in preschool, poorer youngsters could wind up in child-care situations that lack such learning opportunities.

“We already have a child care crisis, and with welfare reform we’re going to have an increased need,” Mazzoni said. “So we have to be cautious about a bill that exacerbates that problem. . . . This could leave some parents with no child care option at all.”

Despite such reservations, Mazzoni said she was not necessarily opposed to the bill. The chairwoman said she kept her own son--who was born in November--out of kindergarten for a year because “he was physically small and he was not ready.”

“It’s not a problem I’m unfamiliar with and I’m not necessarily going to vote against the bill,” she said.

But Assemblyman Howard Wayne (D-San Diego) said he remains unconvinced of a need for the date change. Wayne said the current system works because parents have the option of delaying their children’s kindergarten start if they so choose.

“I think that parents are in a very good position to judge the maturity level of their children,” Wayne said. “It doesn’t make sense to me to change the date and then make parents whose children are ready to start jump through hoops to get them in.”

If adopted, Runner’s bill would require 118,000 preschool-age children--about one of every four children who enter kindergarten in California annually--to wait another year before starting classes.

It would also free up nearly $8 billion in public school money over 13 years, which Runner says could be used for school construction projects, class-size reduction or financing of preschool for disadvantaged children.

A former educator and mayor of Lancaster before his election to the Assembly in November, Runner expressed regret Thursday over the committee’s action but said, “We certainly haven’t given up the fight.”

“This is good public policy, and we’ve got broad bipartisan support,” said Runner, noting that he has two Democratic co-authors in the Assembly and one in the state Senate. “This delay is disappointing but it doesn’t stop here.”

If the bill becomes law, California would follow a path already traveled by most other states, which began moving back their birthday cutoff date during the late 1980s. Twenty-six states set the date in September. Indiana’s date is in June and Missouri’s is in July.

If it is ultimately approved by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Pete Wilson, the date change would be phased in over three years.