By 2008, state aid to Howard County's schools will have increased by $37 million because of Thornton Commission legislation, giving the district $775 more to spend on each student every year, school officials told members of the County Council yesterday.

But the legislation's all-day kindergarten requirement could also end up increasing the county's education costs by a large amount, members of the County Council and Board of Education said yesterday at their quarterly meeting on school-related issues.

Increased state aid is "welcome," but it also creates some unsettling unknowns, said Councilman Guy J. Guzzone, a North Laurel-Savage Democrat.

"The question is, will that cover the costs of the increased demands placed on the system by the state," particularly in regards to full-day kindergarten, Guzzone said. "To me, at this point, that still seems up in the air."

Howard County now has kindergartners in school for a full day only in select programs. Most children at that grade level go to school either in the morning or the afternoon. The new legislative mandate of full-day kindergarten for all pupils by 2008 potentially will require the system to find 59 new classrooms and the money for teachers and aides to staff them.

Guzzone loosely calculated that the extra kindergarten classrooms could cost the county about $20 million in capital spending.

"We don't have that kind of money to deal with that right now," he said. "But we have to plan. I think everybody is more focused on that than maybe ever before."

Councilman Allan H. Kittleman, a western county Republican, spent a good deal of time trying to understand the use of portable classrooms, commonly called "relocatables," in Howard schools.

Many county elementary schools and some middle and high schools have portable classrooms because of crowding in the main buildings. But Kittleman expressed confusion after reviewing some of the schools' enrollment numbers and comparing them with the number of portables on site.

Some schools were more crowded than others and had fewer or no relocatables, while other schools, with relatively few students over capacity, seemed to have a campus full of them, he said.

"I struggle with that," Kittleman said.

"You're not the only one," said Sandra H. French, board vice chairwoman.

The district's coordinator of geographic systems, David C. Drown - whose office assigns the temporary classrooms - said the decision to relieve school crowding with relocatables involves many factors, including the age of the school, whether administrators can make better use of space in the building, enrollment projections, anticipated redistricting and what kind of support programs - such as pre-kindergarten - are housed in the school.

"It would be a whole lot easier if there was a set formula," Drown said.

After the meeting, Drown said Kittleman's questions were on the mark. "We do need to take a look at our alignment of relocatable classrooms and what our capacities tell us, but until we finish all the redistricting and everything that's involved in opening a new elementary school and a new middle school this year, it'll probably be better to hold off."

But for the most part, Drown said, schools that have relocatable classrooms will more than likely keep them.

"You want to try to avoid where you put a portable in and you come right back in and take it out," he said. "That's not a good use of resources."