This WA pre-K program is hugely popular — and in peril

It’s a Monday morning in Lisa Giamberso’s ReadyK classroom at Mount View Elementary, and her students are gathered on a brightly colored carpet. They sing: “Eyes are watching, ears are listening, voices quiet, body calm. This is how we listen in our class.”

They do some calming “bubble breaths” together. They sing a song greeting each other by name. Then it’s Señor Hippo’s time to shine. The children pass around the puppet and talk about how they’re feeling.

Circle time showcases what advocates say is key about prekindergarten programs like this one in King County’s Highline school district: It helps develop young children’s social and emotional skills before they start elementary school.

Mount View Elementary is one of the many Washington public schools that have embraced Transition to Kindergarten, or TK, a state-funded prekindergarten program for 4-year-olds that spans a school day, is led by certified teachers and is often hosted at neighborhood public schools. And crucially, in a state where childcare costs can be eye-watering, TK classes are free.

School leaders — and the state’s superintendent — say TK is getting children ready for school and filling an early learning void in rural areas. The program is wildly popular, with more than 7,000 spots available this year, up from just 500 spots in 2020.

It was poised for even more growth, before lawmakers cut funding for about 2,000 spots during this year’s legislative session. Lawmakers also explicitly allowed schools to charge a sliding-scale fee for TK classes.

The success, and now retrenchment, of this program encapsulates the challenges Washington state has had with building an early learning system, resulting in services that are often expensive and hard to find.

Compared to elsewhere, Washington has relatively low rates of state preschool access for 4-year-olds, and state estimates suggest only about 30% of preschool-age children are enrolled in a public or private program.

While many areas lack enough childcare, this is especially true in rural areas, where Transition to Kindergarten has been “a game changer,” said Jim Kowalkowski, a former school district superintendent and now director of the Rural Education Center. Without a program like TK, he said, “ … we see so many kids coming to us in kindergarten that are just not ready. They’re not ready to learn, and for all kinds of reasons.”

The program also fills a gap for parents who exceed the income limits for government assistance programs like Head Start or the state’s childcare subsidy, but struggle to afford the cost of private childcare. The state does offer a free preschool program for low-income 3-to-5-year-olds, but there are income limits: about $50,000 for a family of four. (Children with disabilities may qualify regardless of income, and family income limits are higher for children who are tribal members.)

The median monthly cost of childcare in Washington for a preschooler is $1,480 for a childcare center, according to Child Care Aware of Washington. In King County, it’s $1,881.

“For middle-class working families that have two parents working outside of the home, accessing early learning is really difficult,” said Rebecca Webber, who teaches TK in the rural Reardan-Edwall School District west of Spokane.

Lifeline for rural communities

For areas with fewer residents and fewer employers, a school district’s Transition to Kindergarten program might be the only option for early childhood learning, said Erica Hallock, senior adviser at Start Early Washington.

Private providers in these areas can find it hard to sustain operations since the population is so small, leaving parents scrambling to find local care.

Lindsay Krupke, who lives in Reardan, said the closest early learning opportunities are 15 to 30 miles away. Before TK was available, her family didn’t qualify for the state’s free preschool program, so she drove her oldest son 30 minutes to preschool a few days a week, because a closer program was full. To make up the rest of the time, she pieced together care with help from a part-time nanny and grandparents.

Her younger son went to TK, which meant “a lot less stress,” she said.

Students attending TK can also benefit from the existing public school district’s infrastructure. Webber said most of the kids in her TK class ride the bus, which helps parents fit in a workday. Attending TK at the neighborhood school is also a convenient option for parents if older siblings go to the same school.

Social, emotional growth

Researchers and educators agree that the year before kindergarten is a crucial time in a child’s development, which can have ripple effects on the child’s educational and socio-emotional outcomes for years to come. Yet political efforts to grow the early learning system in this state have been uneven at best, with new programs announced one year and budget cuts the next.

But for the educators in the system, they see Transition to Kindergarten as a program worth growing.

Nik Bergman, superintendent of the Quincy School District in Grant County, emphasized that his district’s program is not just piping kindergarten standards down to preschoolers — TK is play-based and social. The goal is to teach kids how to “do school,” said the district’s whole child director, Colleen Frerks.

Bergman has seen kids who participate in TK go on to become leaders in their kindergarten classes: They know how to hold a lunch tray, stand in line, sit on the carpet, sing their ABCs and count to 10.

“The growth that we see over the course of the year of them in our (TK) program, it’s just astonishing,” Bergman said.

As digital devices proliferate, there is some evidence suggesting screen time negatively affects development of fine motor skills in young children. TK helps kids learn how to hold a pencil and scissors — and basic life skills like buttoning buttons.

In other words, TK classes come at a time when young children are “learning to be people,” said Gerry Grubbs, superintendent of two small school districts in Grapeview and Index.

Webber, the TK teacher in Reardan, pointed out, “I can’t put on a jacket for 17 kids myself … At home with a parent, it’s really easy to help them: Quick, put their coat on and zip it up. In a classroom, they have to learn how to do a little bit of that for themselves.”

While some kids in Giamberso’s class may have attended half-day preschool or a daycare program, she says many haven’t seen the inside of a classroom before. So in her TK class, they work on building stamina for a full day of school. The sharing circle is a way for the kids to practice sitting safely — wiggles allowed — and listening to other students.

“That is a huge life skill that, in kindergarten, is really necessary, but they don’t necessarily get that time to focus on it,” she said.

Academic readiness

A little over a decade ago, Kristi Dominguez was working as the early learning coordinator at the Bellingham School District and noticed many families were petitioning for early entrance to kindergarten. State law allows it for children who show the ability or need.

The district ended up launching the state’s first TK program in 2014, and other districts began to follow suit.

In the eight years that Dominguez ran Bellingham’s Promise Kindergarten program, it served about 1,400 students. Dominguez said the students who completed TK were less likely to need special education services or additional support than their peers who did not attend TK. Families who’d participated in TK also had a higher rate of participation in the elementary school community, and only a small percentage of the children required additional support from federal or state funding.

Dominguez’s experience suggests any proactive investment Washington makes in early childhood education, and TK specifically, will return dividends for students and the state.

“What we do now is going to save us money in the long term,” said Dominguez, who is now the superintendent in Ferndale.

Frerks, of the Quincy School District, calls TK “one of the most effective interventions I’ve seen in my career as a public educator.”

In Quincy, data shows that students who completed TK arrived at kindergarten demonstrably more ready for school than their peers overall — even than those other kindergartners who had a non-TK preschool experience. Students who had no early learning experience prior to kindergarten were the least likely to meet similar school readiness levels as their peers who had TK or other preschool experience.

Webber, the TK teacher in Reardan, previously taught kindergarten in public schools.

In preparing to teach TK, she created a list of skills she wished kids had when she taught kindergarten, including comfort with counting and the alphabet. Children who come into kindergarten without early learning are starting out behind, Webber says.

“It’s not because of a lack of intelligence … it’s not their capabilities,” she said. “They just haven’t had the opportunity or the exposure to being in an academic setting.”

TK is shrinking

TK’s rapid expansion was set to continue in 2025, with about a dozen districts planning to open programs, which would have served about 400 students, said Samantha Bowen, executive director of early learning for the state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. But state lawmakers intervened and capped the program due to budget issues.

While lawmakers cut funding for TK this year, the state’s free preschool program for low-income families, the Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program, is poised to expand over the next decade by as many as 10,000 slots due to a donation from Ballmer Group. (Ballmer Group also provides funding to The Seattle Times to support coverage of early childhood education. The Seattle Times maintains editorial control over this and all its coverage.)

“While I appreciate the growth that we will see in ECEAP over the next 10 years, which is wonderful, if we’re cutting another program, then that becomes a moot point,” Bowen said. “We’re really not growing the system as a whole.”