Our PTA membership has not yet voted on this revision to the revision to the superintendent's capital improvement plan. As the PTA president, I have never been informed that MCPS was planning such a large school.

To the contrary, I have been told the new school would be 400 to 600 students, which is mandated by a Board of Education policy that limits school capacity to four classes per grade and 25 students per classroom, except kindergarten, which is 22 students. So, 4x25=100 students, 100x5 grades=500, plus 88 for kindergarten, equals 588 students. And that is the uppermost limit of the school population.

So we need to open a school on the Kendale site for 400 students. Then -- sooner than perhaps the county thinks -- we will have to renovate and reopen Seven Locks Elementary School for 350 students. That is my conclusion from the document submitted by MCPS. We need the elementary school capacity, but we need it at two schools, not one.

Christopher Rigaux, Bethesda