Admissions Policies

We take applications from families who meet the following criteria for their family and their child. A separate application is required for each individual child.

Most all applications and payment of application fees is online. When we use the term “receive” in our policies, we mean that the application and payment are processed online and are automatically entered with a date and time stamp into our Application and Waiting List database. If, in a rare case, a hard copy application must be processed, “received” means physically received and date and time-stamped in our main office.

The criteria and policies include:

1. We accept applications for children who are chronologically and developmentally at least two months old to five years old. Families may apply for admission of a child who is between five and 5.9 years old. However, preschool programs, including ours, are only licensed for children up to 5.9 years old; at which time they would have to leave the program.

2. We only accept and process applications for children and families who apply for our full-day, full-year program. There is no part-time program. Priority is given to the children of State of California employees, to siblings of children in the program, and to families who have had children in the program.

3. An application must be completed before a child can be considered for enrollment or placed on the Waiting List for the program. An application is incomplete if it is not fully and accurately filled out and/or if it is not fully paid in the online process with the $75 application fee, or if applying by hard copy form, it is not accompanied by a check with the payment of the $75 application fee. No application fee is refundable.

To be considered, the application must be current and renewed each year before the anniversary date of the original application. The applicant family can then keep the original application date as a higher priority for enrollment.

All applicant families are asked to keep in regular contact with C5 during the year prior to their preferred enrollment date. The guidelines are to contact C5 once each month in the six months prior to the preferred enrollment date and every other month prior to that. C5 also uses the record of this regular contact as a secondary factor in creating a priority for choosing a child for enrollment in each of the preference categories listed below.

4. When vacancies occur, they are filled first from the Application-Waiting List. A child is given a priority on the list according to these preferences:

First Preference—A child of a State of California employee. For purposes of this admissions policy, a “child of a State of California employee” refers to a child whose parents, guardians, or other relatives claiming the child as a dependent for tax purposes are employees who receive a paycheck issued by the State of California.

The tiebreakers in this category are:
1) A sibling is already enrolled in the program
2) The earliest date of application receipt

Second Preference— A child with a sibling who is already enrolled in the program.

The tiebreakers in this category are:
1) The sibling with the earliest date of enrollment
2) The earliest date of application receipt for the second child

Third Preference—All other children with families who understand and agree to abide by the philosophy and practices of our program and can met the terms of the program.

Families are contacted for enrollment based on the family with the earliest date their application was received by C5.

The tiebreakers in this category are:
1) The earliest date and time of day that the application was received by C5
2) The family who has kept in regular contact with C5 during the year prior to their preferred enrollment date. The guidelines are to contact C5 once each month in the six months prior to the preferred enrollment date and every other month prior to that

5. Notwithstanding the above preferences, a child’s place on the Waiting List does not create any entitlement to enrollment in the program. C5 retains full discretion to not accept any child during any part of the application and/or enrollment processes for any reason. Examples might be for developmental, educational, or administrative reasons.

6. Places on the Waiting List are not transferable from one child to another.

7. If a child is offered enrollment, and the offer is declined, the parent may elect to keep their child on the Waiting List until a better time. If the parent requests, we will keep their child on the Waiting List. The child will be eligible for future vacancies in accordance with the guidelines described above. However, if three offers of enrollment are declined, the child will be taken off the Waiting List, and a new application must be submitted for the child to be eligible for reconsideration for enrollment.

8. The “Application Date” is considered by C5 to be the date that C5 receives the completed application form and application fee in our office. Your completed application form is date-stamped and your application fee is processed for deposit on the day they are received.

Any application expires one year after it is received by C5, if the child on the application is not enrolled within that time. A new application for each individual child must be submitted before the expiration date on the previous application for continuous consideration and the date of the original application to be maintained as a priority. If a subsequent application is submitted after the expiration date of the prior application, the family will be placed on the Waiting List in line with the new date that the subsequent application was received by C5.

9. When a child is offered enrollment in the program, all pre-enrollment procedures must be completed before the child’s first day. These include a Health Screening completed and a form signed by the child’s physician; all immunizations up-to-date and an official record presented to C5; all C5 administrative paperwork, including the enrollment packet forms completed and turned in; and, all preliminary, enrollment, and deposit fees paid.