Will an extra year of kindergarten help ESL students? (Notebook: up-to-date and usable education information from schools, government, business, research and professional organizations).

Superintendent Al Mijares is in a desperate situation. In the Santa Ana School District, located near Los Angeles, three of every four students entering kindergarten don't speak English. Most come from Hispanic households with parents who speak only Spanish; 85 percent of his students live in poverty. As these students progress through the system, they routinely lag behind in English language skills. "It is not uncommon to find ninth graders functioning at a sixth grade reading level," he says. "These students enter kindergarten with no preschool and no Head Start."

By expanding kindergarten to a two-year program, Mijares hopes to give these students a better foundation in English language skills. It is obvious the district's traditional half-day kindergarten class isn't working for this non-traditional student population, he argues. He wants a two-year program that would monitor English language progress and assess whether a kindergarten student is ready to move to first grade. It is estimated that the expansion will cost the district an extra $12 million in staffing and other costs.

The cost of an expanded kindergarten is equal to what it would cost the district to open a public preschool. "Absent a preschool program, which is desperately needed, we are looking at a two-year kindergarten program," Mijares says. He has considered an alternative-making kindergarten a full-day program but his district doesn't have the space. As the state's fifth-largest school district, Santa Ana is "beyond over-crowded," he says. Almost half of the district's 61,000 students are cramped in schools that are two to three times beyond capacity.

The state of California, however, has to do further analysis on the legality of a two-year kindergarten program. California prohibits schools receiving state and federal funds from tracking students into classes for the disadvantaged. "I think this might be seen as tracking children by language ability," explains Ada Hand, a California education consultant.

Mijares has yet to make a formal proposal to his school board, something he will do this spring, he says. State officials, including Ada Hand, win then meet with him for further discussion. "I think, basically, that people are impressed with the superintendent's ability to focus on these big issues," Hand says. It remains to be seen though whether his vision meshes with California's education policy.