When school choice starts next year, principal Nell Chapman expects that most of those students will return. Then add the incoming kindergarteners who have guaranteed spots because their older siblings already attend Brooker Creek.

That leaves few seats for other Pinellas County elementary students who might want to choose Brooker Creek for its high test scores, dedicated volunteer corps and good reputation.

"If everyone decides to come back, I don't know that there will be much room," Chapman said.

Brooker Creek is one of dozens of Pinellas schools that will have little room for students who list them as one of their choice options.

According to a draft report prepared by the school district, Bauder Elementary in Seminole has 907 students and room for about 561. With the help of portable classrooms, Clearwater's Skycrest Elementary is squeezing 884 students into a campus designed for 607. Tarpon Springs Middle is designed to hold 1,259 students but has 1,724. Boca Ciega High in Gulfport is packed with 2,096 students when it should have closer to 1,683.

The numbers illustrate Lisa Noah's point: She has limited options.

She would have liked to apply for Bauder, Oakhurst, Anona or Orange Grove elementaries. They're all packed. So she decided on a sure thing: keeping her son at Madeira Beach Elementary for first grade.

"Anybody that lives in a 20-mile radius, we're all going to pick the same schools," Noah said. "I don't really have a choice."

Last week, the school district released a three-ring binder full of preliminary statistics that describe how many students should be in every school and the actual enrollment. In all, 66 schools have too many students. Forty-three have too few.

That imbalance is the result of decades of neighborhood zoning. For years, the district's policy was to squish students into schools as they moved into nearby homes with no regard for the the school's capacity. Eventually, dozens of schools needed portable classrooms to handle the overflow. Meanwhile, other schools had empty seats.

Choice is supposed to be the big fix.

Families no longer will be guaranteed a zoned school. Instead, students will have to apply to attend the schools they want. A computer processing the applications will fill a school only to its designated capacity.

Portables won't disappear overnight.

The school district promised that students who were enrolled June 6, 2001, and met certain conditions could have "extended grandfathering" to attend their zoned elementary, middle and high schools. It will take a decade for those students to move through the school system before the district can spread students throughout the district to fill open seats.

When the capacity numbers are finalized, smart-shopping parents can study the statistics to gauge where they think their kids will have the best shot of getting in. A school that is crowded today and likely to have dozens of grandfathered kids isn't likely to have many open spots.

But parents can't study yet: Though the application process is under way, the capacity numbers won't be official and available until mid October.

"It's very aggravating because this data coming out may have changed some people's minds," said Steve Taylor, a parent of three whose top choices are crowded Palm Harbor or Tarpon Springs schools. "As you make these decisions, you're short data."

All applications for magnet and fundamental schools are due Oct. 15; applications for other schools are due Dec. 13.

District administrators have been working for months to finalize the capacity numbers. They counted the number of classrooms in every school. Then they considered which special programs -- such as dropout prevention or special education -- the schools would house. Finally, they used state formulas to determine how many students in each grade could fit.

That was the capacity for the permanent facility.

Officials also arrived at a second number: how many portables the school could handle, based on flat land, the number of bathrooms and the size of the cafeteria. Officials said they would use portables at a school only to accommodate grandfathering or if that part of the county doesn't have enough permanent seats for all of the students.

The only exception to these rules is Palm Harbor University High School, a perennially crowded school that has 2,357 students. Palm Harbor's permanent capacity is set at 2,009, and that includes 16 portables. Jim Underhill, a planning specialist in the district's student assignment office, said Palm Harbor was allowed to count its portables because it had been promised a new building.

Fundamental schools also weren't included in the report. Underhill said their enrollment was controlled through the fundamental application process.

Principals received the numbers last week and have been asked to sign off on them. Some have complained that information was entered incorrectly or that art rooms were forgotten. Underhill said some numbers would be adjusted.

This week, former pupil assignment director Marlene Mueller will return to give the numbers a final once-over. After that, they should be available on the district's Web site (www.pinellas.k12.fl.us).

Superintendent Howard Hinesley said it was worth taking extra time to make sure the numbers were correct. He said other districts with choice programs didn't set fixed capacity numbers, allowing popular schools to stay crowded and unpopular schools to stay empty.

"The single greatest problem in other areas was a moving target for capacity," Hinesley said. "This is what we're trying to avoid."

Principals don't want to gradually lose any of their teachers, but they said they were looking forward to using their buildings as architects intended. At Boca Ciega High right now, walls were erected in five classrooms to create 10 smaller ones. Six teachers don't have their own classrooms and have to "float" to available rooms.

"That does not make for happy campers," said principal Barbara Paonessa, adding that it would take years to reduce her school's population by 400 students. "This is actually a 12-year look down the road. It's not realistic in the near future."

Tarpon Springs Middle School is so packed that principal Keith Davis and his staff members have had to write traffic patterns for the halls.

"We've had to give students directions on how to move," Davis said, adding that a science teacher uses the media center as a classroom.

Blanton Elementary School principal Deborah Turner agrees that a smaller school has its benefits. She has about 100 too many students and 23 portables. Those portables constantly require work, such as new air conditioning, termite treatments and new siding. Turner has to buy about 10 umbrellas per portable for escorting students to the main building on rainy days.

Julie Janssen has a different problem: Countryside High School has too few students. She has 1,973 students now. The district's preliminary report showed that she could have 2,600, but Janssen said she thinks the number should be closer to 2,300.

Either way, Countryside must draw students. The school is changing its schedule to give students more opportunities to take electives and will offer special areas of study, such as television production, finance and graphic arts.

What if those programs aren't enough to make Countryside a first or second choice for hundreds of new students? Janssen worries her school could end up filled with students who never wanted to attend Countryside.

"It does worry me that the projection is that high," Janssen said. "All of a sudden, we're going to pull in 400 more kids? Where are we going to find more kids?"

Sheila Jaquish would love the luxury of some breathing room.

Skycrest Elementary, where Jaquish is principal, dismisses bus riders 10 minutes earlier than students who walk, ride bikes or are picked up by parents to keep kids safe and traffic moving. Teachers estimated that group trips to crowded bathrooms, which are sometimes long walks from classrooms, waste 45 minutes daily.

At the same time, the school's arts program is attracting interest from families that want to apply to Skycrest next year. It's a compliment to Jaquish and her staff -- but one she's not sure she wants.

"If I didn't have 900 kids," she said, "I would be really happy."

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