I realize I'm stating the obvious to most here, but just in case some people are going through this right now:
In many places it's very easy to get around this by doing private kindergarten.
My parents did this with me and we did it with one of our kids. In an ideal world there would be a discretionary process but if you aren't up to fighting a battle and you can swing one year of private school financially, it gets the job done.
This is only a super easy fix is your child is fairly close to the cut-off date. Otherwise it may still be iffy to convince a private school to accept a young kindergartener.
I believe in CA you'd have to also do 1st grade at the private school or they would make you repeat K as 1st grade has an age requirement as well.
I think they should have a Sep. 1 'guideline' but should be willing to allow in kids who fall within a certain range if they are ready.
I could tell the kids who were late fall birthdays in DS's class, some were definitely not ready to be there and I believe will really struggle in 1st next year. But that isn't the case for every one, some were obviously ready and did wonderfully.
