Our school district gives individual assessment to children who miss the cutoff date and admit them on a case-by-case basis. My child, who missed the cutoff date by just a few days, was allowed early entrance into K this year.

Not all school districts have this flexibility -- we called a few neighboring districts (because at one point we were considering moving), and none of them would make any exception.

At the end though, we decided to go with the private school route.