Pity Assemblywoman Sharon Runner, R-Lancaster. She had a perfectly sensible notion -- changing the kindergarten entry date so that 4-year-olds wouldn't get caught up in the academic juggernaut that has become kindergarten in California. Then her Republican colleagues in the Legislature co-opted the idea, perverted it by turning it into a budget gimmick and made it pretty much a laughingstock.

When Assembly Republicans proposed their scorched-earth budget recently, they took Runner's kindergarten bill, AB 810, and ran with it. They salivated over the possibility of saving $750 million this fiscal year by holding next fall's youngest kindergartners -- some 115,000 students -- out of school until the following year. But they failed to acknowledge that such haste would create monumental disruption for parents who have already made plans to send these kids to school in the fall.

And while the plan might save the state money, it would wreak havoc on many school districts. The districts would find it too late to lay off all those no-longer-needed kindergarten teachers, which would leave them in the absurd position of paying teachers who had no students to teach.

If California is going to delay the kindergarten entry date, from the existing requirement that children be age 5 by Dec. 1 of the year they start school to requiring they be 5 by Sept. 1, it will need more time for schools and parents to plan for the change.

The sad part of this is that the GOP has hijacked a good idea in its benumbed search for quick budget cuts. Ask almost any kindergarten teacher and she will tell you the change is needed. California's newly drafted master plan for education, a thoughtful blueprint that came out of countless hours of study and debate, calls for delaying the entry date. This state is only one of eight that allows children to start so young.

But the change will only succeed if there is some coherent kindergarten readiness strategy -- meaning state-funded, high quality preschool -- for all those children the state will be turning away whose parents cannot afford good preschool themselves. That more coherent approach is prescribed by the master plan and contained in another bill, AB 56 by Assemblyman Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, which will be considered next year. Runner says she'd like to see some of the savings used to provide quality preschool for poor children who fall into that group; her Republican colleagues, however, seem only interested in the cash.

If Republicans and the rest of the Legislature want to have a real policy discussion on this subject, they'll have to face up to the new kindergarten reality. What used to be a time for socialization, songs, art and naps has become a rigorous academic hurdle that is too high for some children, especially those who haven't had intellectually stimulating home lives or preschool experiences.

California should examine the wisdom of that shift and recognize the new reality. If it expects 5-year-olds to meet higher standards, it will have to do more than just tinker with timelines to help prepare them.