California made a landmark investment in its youngest learners by establishing Universal Prekindergarten, which created an additional year of play-based learning available to all 4-year-olds starting in the 2025-26 school year.

Recognizing the need to strengthen leadership support for this new grade level, ACSA has created the Early Education Leaders Academy.

Led by two experienced leaders — Dr. Kelly Fountain, early learning director with Lancaster Elementary School District; and Tandy Taylor, executive director of educational services in Cypress School District — the new academy is designed to build leadership capacity in administrators serving young learners and their families.

When California created Universal Prekindergarten, it said all 4-year-olds should have access to play-based learning, whether through state and federal-funded programs, private daycare, family childcare, religious-based preschool, or transitional kindergarten.

“This was definitely a historic moment for California,” said Fountain, who has worked with groups at the state level to support UPK implementation and serves on ACSA’s Council of Early Education Leaders. “Universal Transitional Kindergarten was named as one of the opportunities within the mixed-delivery system on an LEA campus that should look different in the way that it provides a foundational learning experience for children through play.”

Although UPK is now available to all, Fountain said districts are in different stages of implementing and integrating early education into their systems.

For instance, she said, the person in charge of evaluating credentialed TK teachers may not have any experience in this new grade level. Curriculum choices made during the rushed rollout of TK may not truly support a play-based approach to learning. Hiring managers may not fully comprehend which credential-holders provide the highest-quality experiences for early learners, highlighting the need to pay attention to the new PK-3 credential.

Fountain said this academy was designed to “connect the dots” and support anyone who makes decisions about the early education system — even leaders in compliance, finance or human resources whose daily work “doesn’t involve the letters U-T-K.”

“We have spent countless hours cultivating content and recruiting high-level speakers for the academy that will support you to work in your LEA to rethink your approach to UTK to make it count for all your students,” she said.

Fountain can’t emphasize enough how important early learning is to the future success of students. For starters, she mentions executive functioning. Fountain said UPK provides a developmentally appropriate space for children to learn executive functioning, which supports life skills such as focus, self-control and perspective taking. Learning these skills at a young age can have ripple effects throughout a child’s entire educational experience.

“If early learning is able to push this approach up through the P-3 learning progressions, we would see higher academic output, decreased dysregulation, increased engagement in learning, and a drastic reduction in missed days of school, suspension, and expulsion,” she said. “Tell me how not investing in teaching executive functioning in a play-based opportunity doesn’t support older grades.”

When she first started working in UTK, Fountain said she had plenty of “somebody should fix this” moments. Now she hopes to help others solve those systemic issues by deepening their understanding of this pivotal grade.

“I hope any person in a district that has an impact on the trajectory of a 4-year-old’s life will consider taking this academy so that they can be the somebody that makes a difference,” she said.