Mountaintop Montessori is in its 39th year of offering high-quality Montessori education to families in the Charlottesville area.  The quality of our program is based on implementing Montessori principles of education which have always included mixed-age groupings in all its classrooms.  Please clarify the language to allow Montessori schools to continue to offer multi-age preschool classrooms balanced by age with a ratio of 14 to 1 ( and in subsection O), and not as stated in subsection C  requiring that the ratio be based on the youngest age group in the classroom.  Balanced multi-age classrooms of 3 to 6-year-olds are an essential component of our well-established pedagogy.  Classrooms that have too few children of each age do not support the type of learning environment that we believe is vital to fostering independence by creating an over-reliance on adults and reducing cross-peer relationships. Thank you!  Patricia Colby, Ph.D., Head of School.