The Montgomery County Board of Education listened last week as area residents and parents argued why the proposal -- first introduced in October by the county executive -- was not in the best interest of students.

"You are about schools and education, not housing," said Diana Conway, who has three students at Potomac Elementary School. "The county's failure to correct its affordable housing policy does not mean this board must now perpetuate the overcrowding of schools."

Montgomery County Public Schools has 14 school sites, each of which is at least 10 acres, set aside for future school construction. It also has several smaller parcels adjacent existing schools should there be need to enlarge those facilities.

Three sites -- 20 acres on Brickyard Road and 10 acres on Kendale Road, both in Potomac, and 1.75 acres on Edson Lane adjacent Tilden Middle School in Rockville -- are currently being considered for affordable housing. The Board of Education is set to vote on the proposal March 22.

School board President Sharon Cox asked at a March 3 meeting where new students would attend schools since transferring the land means it will no longer be available should the school system need of more space, and the addition of affordable housing will likely bring more children into already crowded classrooms.

"If we build something now and kids come out of it, are you considering that?" Cox asked Joseph Lavorgna, director of planning and capital programming for Montgomery County Public Schools.

Lavorgna said that while difficult, additional students could be accommodated in existing schools.

Cox suggested that a boundary change, rather than construction, could also be used as a tool for accommodating students.

"We consider a boundary change a capital improvement ... but with no real cost," Cox said.

Montgomery Superintendent Jerry D. Weast said he is not opposed to turning the sites over, although he has suggested swapping the Kendale property with the comparably sized Seven Locks Elementary School site at Seven Locks Road and Bradley Boulevard in Bethesda.

Seven Locks is scheduled to undergo several building projects starting next year, when construction of a 10-room addition to accommodate up to 250 reassigned students from overcrowded Potomac Elementary School is slated to get under way. A new gymnasium is expected to be completed by early 2007 and the school is scheduled to undergo an 18-month modernization beginning in 2009.

Last week, Weast said the school system needs to help county employees -- firefighters, police and teachers -- many of whom have salaries in the $30,000 range. The county school system is responsible for 800 new hires every year, many of which are unable to find affordable housing near their places of work, Weast said.

"Some are driving as far away as West Virginia," Weast said. "We do not see a reason why we can't proceed at this time with surplusing."

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, Weast said.

But parents said it was not up to the school system to resolve the county's housing problems.

"My dictionary defines surplus as 'the amount that remains when use of need is satisfied,'" Conway said. "We are all here because we have not been shown that use or need have been satisfied."

Originally built for 488 students, Potomac Elementary now houses 596. The excess enrollment is housed in nine portable classrooms. While the portables would no longer be needed when students are reassigned to either Seven Locks or the new building at Kendale Road, relinquishing land means overcrowding could be an issue again as new development brings more children, Conway said.

"MCPS' stock of unbuilt land, barely 220 acres, seems a thin margin on which to accommodate the growth we know is coming, and also correct existing overcrowding," she said.

Janis Sartucci, a coordinator for the Churchill Cluster, which Potomac Elementary School is in, said there are currently 27 portable classrooms placed among the cluster's eight schools. Sartucci said that number will grow in the fall when Bells Mill Elementary becomes the first in the cluster to have all-day kindergarten. By 2007, all of the elementary schools will have all-day kindergarten. Bells Mill now has five portable classrooms with the half-day program in place now, Sartucci said.

"Land is an irreplaceable asset in our cluster," she said. "This land was entrusted to the Board of Education to hold for the benefit of future generations of hard working ... precious children."