We hear a lot about gridlock in Sacramento. We hear that only powerful special interests and highly paid lobbyists have the clout to push legislation through the Capitol maze.

And then every once in a while, we hear about people like Natalie Bivas and Diana Argenti, two Palo Alto elementary school teachers who saw a problem that had baffled the Legislature for two decades, came up with a solution, defied powerful special interests and got a bill passed to fix the problem in just a few months.

It's almost enough to restore my faith in the system.

Bivas and Argenti were the driving force behind the Kindergarten Readiness Act, which changes the birthday cutoff for children entering kindergarten from Dec. 2 to Sept. 1 and establishes a year of "transitional kindergarten" for