California’s Transitional Kindergarten expansion has reached a different phase in 2025. What was a partial rollout three years ago is closer to universal access for age-eligible four-year-olds. For private childcare programs, this is the year the landscape stops being theoretical and starts being operational reality.
Here’s what private centers are reporting
Most four-year-old families now have a real public option. The decision tree has shifted. Where five years ago a family compared two or three private preschools to each other, today many families compare your program to free or low-cost public TK. The math is different. The comparison criteria are different. Your value proposition has to be sharper.
Wrap-around is the growth area for many private programs. TK on its own doesn’t usually solve the working-family schedule problem. Before-school, after-school, holiday, and summer wrap-around remains in heavy demand. Private centers that have configured themselves to serve wrap-around — for TK kids and beyond — are seeing real traction.
Infant-toddler enrollment is stabilizing some programs. The youngest age bands (six weeks to three years) are where TK doesn’t reach, and where private childcare has a durable advantage. Centers that have expanded their infant or toddler offerings are reporting more steady financial pictures.
Three-year-old families are doing the long calculus. They’re enrolling at age three and asking openly about the value of staying through age four. Centers that have a clear, specific answer — smaller class sizes, mixed-age continuity, specific curriculum philosophy, schedule flexibility — are retaining more of those families. Centers that say ‘we provide quality care’ are losing them.
Some programs are closing or shrinking. Not most. But enough that the field is feeling it. The centers most vulnerable are the ones that were already operating thin, with a four-year-old room providing significant margin, and without the capacity or capital to pivot.
What we’d advise private centers to do in 2025
Look at your actual enrollment data, by age, monthly. Don’t react to community narratives; react to your numbers.
Have an honest conversation with current three-year-old families about their plans for next year. Many will leave for TK. Some won’t. The conversation is the relationship.
Decide deliberately whether to expand down (infant/toddler), expand sideways (wrap-around for TK), expand into school-age (after-school), or hold steady. Each is a real choice.
Update your tour script and website to address TK directly. Acknowledge it. Don’t fight it. Name your specific value.
Build relationships with your local TK programs and school districts. Partnership may serve you more than competition.
And stay in the conversation. TK rollout details continue to evolve. Provider voices in funding and policy decisions matter more in 2025 than they ever have.
TK is the landscape now. The question is what your program looks like inside it.