As Transitional Kindergarten Opens to All 4-Year-Olds, SF Parents Compete for Seats

When Atticus Floc heard that California was allowing universal access to transitional kindergarten starting this school year, he enrolled his son in the San Francisco Unified School District.

Under new rules, any child in California who turns 4 by Sept. 1 is guaranteed a seat in a TK classroom. With a late August birthday, Floc said his little boy, Ryden, just barely made the cutoff, but he was ready.

“TK would be great because it’s like a head start on everything. Me and my wife both felt this would be wonderful for our son to have,” Floc said, adding that Ryden would benefit most from socializing with kids his age.

But the couple was dismayed to discover that the district’s complex student assignment system — known locally as “the lottery” — placed Ryden in a school across town instead of the one mere blocks from where they live in the Sunset District.

Now placed on long waitlists for several nearby schools, they’re wondering whether to keep Ryden home for another year under his grandparents’ care and miss out on TK.

“I don’t understand why it has to be like this. It’s so crazy,” he said.

The competition, especially for a seat in a language immersion school or a school in a wealthy neighborhood, points to strong demand for TK in San Francisco. This year, SFUSD is opening 16 new transitional kindergarten classrooms to accommodate the incoming class.

While it’s too early to provide final enrollment data for 2025–26, the district reported in March that it received the largest number of applications in more than a decade, and the biggest surge in applications was for TK.

While a recent statewide survey found that fewer parents of young kids know about TK than they did just a few years ago, experts say San Francisco parents are more aware of it because the city has been offering free or low-cost preschool for children since 2004. Four-year-olds in the city participate in preschool at a higher rate than their peers in other parts of the state.

“With the price of rent shooting through the sky, working families need those options,” said Henry Wong, principal of Dr. William Cobb Elementary School in Lower Pacific Heights, which has one TK classroom this year.

“A TK program is really wonderful in the sense [that] we’re preparing our kids for school, they’re gaining that foundation of being in a classroom and being around other children, which is very useful,” he said.

The district said 61% of students who applied for TK will be assigned to their first-choice school. After the main round of school assignments, the district uses waitlists to manage school enrollment, leaving many parents holding out for better options.

Floc said the enrollment office told him Ryden stood a better chance of getting into his neighborhood school for kindergarten than for TK, where there was only enough room for 20 students this year.

The district said that due to strict state standards for TK that require adequate space to play indoors and outdoors, and a bathroom nearby for 4-year-olds, some schools don’t have the necessary facilities. That’s why some get assigned to a school outside of their neighborhood.

As Floc and his wife consider their options, he said his top priority is ensuring his son experiences continuity.

“We don’t want to put our son in that position where he’s on the other side of town making friends, and then having to sever those friendships,” Floc said. “We’d rather have him start fresh, knowing that he’s going to stay in one school, and he’s going to make friends and that they’re going to be lasting friendships.”

The school district has long promised to overhaul the current student assignment system, which was intended to create racial and socioeconomic diversity at each school but hasn’t achieved that goal. The district said it will allow families to choose a school within their designated zone, but hasn’t said when it will introduce the new system.

It’s also proposing to create a “feeder system” starting in the next school year, in which TK students who are grouped in the same classroom at a site with appropriate facilities for 4-year-olds would automatically move up to kindergarten at their neighborhood elementary school together.

“I think we’re moving in that direction where we want our families to be within walking distance of their schools or closer, you know, so that they’re not traveling across the city on multiple buses to get there,” Wong said.

Besides the TK classroom, Cobb includes a separate wing for a part-day state preschool program for children under 4. Wong said having the program at the same school site helps ease the transition when young learners move to the next grade level, and allows parents to build their community.

“That continuity is very powerful in the sense that it’s good for the families and it’s good for this school,” he said. “You understand how schools work. You get to know the staff. We understand the needs of the family.”

The school’s new TK teacher, Joselyn Manigque, taught in the preschool classroom at Cobb last year. That means some of the incoming transitional kindergarteners will see a familiar face when they start on Monday.

“They’re excited,” Manigque said. “They know me, and I know them and where they’re at developmentally.”