This bill amends RCW 28A.300.072 to establish a statewide "state transition to kindergarten" policy that creates a program within the public school system to provide high-quality early learning for certain four-year-old children. It requires the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI), working with the Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF), to adopt rules under chapter 34.05 RCW for administration, allocation of state funding, minimum standards, and an application/advance-approval process for school districts, charter schools, and state-tribal education compact schools to enroll state-funded eligible children beginning in the 2025-26 school year. The bill sets procedural requirements for approval and program operation, including local needs assessments, screening tools, use of the Washington kindergarten inventory at enrollment and at least once more during the year, assignment of statewide student identifiers and separate reporting, site readiness and curriculum guidelines, limits on approved sites and per-site enrollment, priority for areas called extreme child care access deserts, prohibition on charging tuition or fees to state-funded eligible children, and a prohibition on excluding eligible children solely because of a disability. The bill defines "eligible children" as those who are at least four years old by August 31 of the school year and who either are determined to benefit from additional preparation based on an appropriate screening process or qualify for ECEAP, Head Start, or Working Connections Child Care but lack access due to living in an extreme child care access desert. It defines "extreme child care access desert" as a cluster of locales showing extreme unmet need and highly constrained supply. It also defines "site," "charter school," and "state-tribal education compact school" for program purposes. On funding and legal status, the bill ties state funding for enrolled eligible children to existing school funding formulas in RCW 28A.150.260 and RCW 28A.160.150–28A.160.192, counts a transition to kindergarten child as a kindergarten student for those calculations but requires separate reporting, and establishes that beginning in 2025-26 statewide annual average FTE funding for these children may not exceed the statewide annual average FTE enrolled during 2023-24. The Legislature states it does not intend this funding to be part of the state's basic education obligation, access is not an individual entitlement, and the act takes effect immediately. Some provisions are incomplete or cut off in the provided text. The extraction omits the full text of certain subsections (including parts referenced as subsection (6) and (7) and a partial subsection (4)(a)), and it does not provide the full procedural detail or any emergency declaration language beyond the effective date. Those missing parts are not available in the provided facts.

If enacted, select school districts, charter schools, and state-tribal compact schools could run a state-funded “transition to kindergarten” program enrolling certain four-year-olds, but they must win OSPI approval, pass a local needs assessment, follow state site and program standards, coordinate with DCYF and local early learning providers, and accept limits on how many state-funded children each site may serve. The state will prioritize sites in extreme child care access deserts, prohibit charging tuition for state-funded slots, require child screening and kindergarten readiness assessments, and treat these children as kindergarten for some funding formulas while reporting them separately. Practically, this creates new administrative and program responsibilities for districts, charters, and tribal schools (applications, needs assessments, screening, reporting, site readiness, and cooperation with regional providers) and subjects them to OSPI/DCYF oversight and site visits. Funding is constrained: payments follow existing school funding formulas but statewide funded enrollment cannot exceed the 2023–24 FTE level beginning 2025–26, and the Legislature does not intend this to become part of the state’s basic education obligation, so expansion is likely limited; key implementation details such as exact funding amounts, approval criteria, and the precise definition or mapping of “extreme child care access deserts” are not fully specified in the provided text.