Short-term cost-cutting measure, perhaps? It looks like it was effective this school year, which probably cut the kindergarten budget by 25%, right off the bat. (I'm not in CA, so I'm just assuming that they went from Dec 1 to Sep 1, which would, at one stroke, eliminate three months worth of birthdays from the 2014-2015 kindergarten class.)
No.. they adjusted it by a month a year. This started a few years back. And when it was Dec 2nd.. that deadline is FIRM. They supposedly added a state funded "pre-K" for fall kids who used to make the deadline. I'm not sure about the status of the pre-K class because of money issues it was supposed to be temporary for the transition.
It was partially for cost cutting measures, but mostly as a way to increase scores of the state testing. And as I said about to be more in line with most of the rest of the country. I agree with this change, my older DD is a late Sept birthday and should really have been help back. I sent her off to college a month shy of her 18th birthday. Parents who could afford to were red-shirting fall babies and thus most of the young fall birthdays were kids who weren't prepared for school. It's a problem from the standpoint of a parent of a gifted kid, but overall I think it's the right thing for the state to have done.
