Four years after renting the property from Montgomery County, Maravell bought a home next door and moved to Potomac from Washington, D.C. Over the years, he built barns on his land to house farming equipment needed to coax soybeans and small grains for seed stock from "Nick's Organic Farm."

"It's a little bit of the original Potomac," Maravell said. "This land has probably been farmed for more than 150 years and it is decent farmland. It's good, fertile soil."

Maravell said he is used to the occasional debates that crop up over what to do with the land, which was originally purchased in 1973 by Montgomery County Public Schools as a future site for Brickyard Road Middle School.

Over the years, the county has considered a number of uses for the property, including a regional park. In 2002, the County Council approved the Potomac Subregion Master Plan, a zoning and land use document that recommended the 20-acre site be turned into a local park, but retained the right to select an alternate public use if needed.

Now the county Board of Education is considering a proposal to declare three properties, including the one on Brickyard Road, as surplus and transferring them to the county for the construction of housing for teachers, firefighters, police officers and others who can't afford the county's average housing costs.

The development and eventual sale of that housing by the county could be used to offset a projected budget shortfall for Montgomery County Public Schools, Superintendent Jerry D. Weast said.

Maravell remains low-key about future uses for the land, even though they would mean he could no longer farm the property from which he's run his business for almost 25 years.

"I'm just one person using it," Maravell said of the Brickyard Road property. "If there's a public use and the community has some thoughts on it, I would go along with what the community says."

But what the community says has bubbled into a heated debate. Weast announced his recommendations for the land at a meeting Monday night. Many Potomac residents now are planning to testify at a public hearing at 7 p.m. March 3 at the auditorium of the Carver Educational Services Center, 850 Hungerford Drive, Rockville. The board is scheduled to act on the issue March 22.

Some community members have told Maravell that they want the land to stay as it is, he said, adding, "Many people ... have told me privately that they like it as open space, as a refuge for wildlife, and as a farm."

Others, like Churchill cluster coordinators Janis Sartucci and Lilo Mitz, both of Potomac, say the property could be used to address overcrowding in schools. It is too early to consider selling the land, Sartucci said, when the Churchill cluster alone has 19 portable classrooms, each holding about 25 students -- the equivalent of another medium-sized elementary school -- and other clusters are also overcrowded.

"Our issue is, do our kids need it or not?" Sartucci said. "From everything that I see, I see an overcrowded cluster. I see portable classrooms. I don't see that this is the time to be surplusing these properties."

Mitz attended a Feb. 11 meeting of the West Montgomery County Citizens Association to express her concerns to County Councilwoman Nancy M. Floreen (D-At large) of Garrett Park. "We're very concerned that these ... properties would be conveyed to another use without considering our current needs," Mitz told Floreen.

But although two of the properties, including the Brickyard Road site, are big enough to house schools, Joe Lavorgna, Montgomery County Public Schools director of planning and capital programming, said, "We have not identified a need for those sites."

Instead, County Executive Douglas M. Duncan (D) asked the Board of Education in October to declare the Brickyard Road site, a 10.5-acre site on Kendale Road and a 1.75-acre property on Edson Lane near Tilden Middle School in North Bethesda as no longer needed for school purposes. Duncan asked that the school board transfer the property to Montgomery County as a space for affordable housing.

Weast supported that idea in a recommendation released Monday, in which he said there is not a sufficient projected enrollment to justify building another middle school like the one once planned for Brickyard Road in the Churchill cluster. Additionally, the Brickyard Road property, which the county purchased for slightly more than $215,000 in the 1970s, is poorly positioned to serve other schools in the Churchill cluster, Weast said.

The Kendale Road Elementary School land, which was purchased in 1965 for $117,667, could be used to build a replacement for Seven Locks Elementary School, which is scheduled to undergo construction of a 10-room addition from 2005-10, Weast said. The superintendent recommended studying the feasibility of that move and, if possible, transferring the current Seven Locks Elementary School site to the county for workforce housing.

If not possible, Weast recommended transferring the Kendale Road property to the county for workforce housing.

Sartucci and Mitz agreed that the Kendale site should be preserved, but said a determination to transfer the Seven Locks property to the county for housing should be made only when that school is vacant. Seven Locks PTA President Chris Rigaux agreed in an e-mail sent Monday to other PTA members, and added that he submitted a petition signed by 71 families against making Seven Locks a surplus property.

Additionally, Sartucci and Mitz said the Brickyard Road and Edson Lane properties should not be made surplus, because the school board does not know how the properties might be needed in the future.

Meanwhile, Maravell is watching the debate. His lease is up for renewal in March, he said, and the county Board of Education has offered him a one-year extension, which he plans to accept. "It's been a long time that I've shepherded that land," Maravell said. "But I pretty much will go along with whatever the community wants."

There will be a public hearing on the surplus school sites at 7 p.m. March 3 at the auditorium of the Carver Educational Services Center, 850 Hungerford Drive in Rockville.

The Seven Locks Elementary School PTA will discuss the surplus school recommendations at a March 2 meeting at Seven Locks, 9500 Seven Locks Road, Bethesda.