As state officials and early education advocates continue to seek legislative support for their efforts to develop a public preschool system, they’re also bracing themselves for an upcoming change to kindergarten eligibility that could have wide-ranging — and perhaps unexpected — implications in Hawaii education.

Last year, state lawmakers passed Act 178, which is set to eliminate the junior kindergarten program starting with the 2014-15 school year. From then on, children must turn five by July 31 of the year they start kindergarten. (In the junior kindergarten program, which is being axed after this school year, the cutoff was December 31.)

Seeing that so many children would be left needing another year of preschool, the decision to eliminate junior kindergarten was in large part intended to galvanize support around the preschool expansion initiative.  But there’s no guarantee the preschool vision will come to fruition, and that would mean thousands of children — 5,000 of them, conservative estimates suggest — will have to stay in preschool a third year or not attend school at all.

It’s one of the many implications — what Senate Education Committee Chair Jill Tokuda described as “ripple effects” — that stakeholders are having to take into account in the coming months.

In preparing for the change, officials are working on disseminating information to parents, ensuring providers are prepared to serve the educational needs of those 5,000 or so children and coordinating with the state Department of Education, which is going to experience a de facto funding cut because of the decline in enrollment.

Advocates have described the change as an opportunity to better prepare children for success in the 21st century, citing inconsistencies in the implementation of the junior kindergarten program and instruction that wasn’t quite tailored to their brain development. 

“It’s not an end in junior kindergarten, but really a change to the kindergarten entry age,” GG Weisenfeld, executive office on early learning director, said at an informational briefing with lawmakers Wednesday. 

She and other officials present at the briefing said they hope to get further funding for an expanded yet small-scale Department of Human Services preschool system for which they secured about $7 million this past session. The program would connect low-income families of late-born children with preschool options, but for now the program is only expected to serve kids who are at or above 200 percent the poverty level — just a third of the kids in need of an alternative schooling option, Tokuda said. 

Advocates also hope to better accommodate children from all types of backgrounds, boosting options for kids and rural areas and getting approved funding for family-engagement programs. 

Photo: Seagull Schools keiki rally at the Capitol in April. (Alia Wong/Civil Beat)

— Alia Wong