"Montgomery County has schools named after astronauts and scientists, presidents and educators, baseball players and civil rights leaders. Some are famous and some are almost unknown. One is Hispanic. One is Native American. But none of the names on Montgomery County's 189 schools is Asian.

So, this spring, after lobbying from the county's Asian American community, the Board of Education proposed three names for an elementary school set to open in Germantown in September. Two of the names were of Asian Americans: the late Spark M. Matsunaga, a Democratic U.S. senator from Hawaii who lived in Montgomery for many years while in Congress, and Alan Cheung, a county resident and the first Asian elected to the school board.

"I see it as an equity issue. It's about fair play," said board member Kermit V. Burnett (Silver Spring). More than 13 percent of county students he noted, are Asian. "There was a time when no schools were named for African Americans, and people said that should be changed. And it was changed. I see this as the Asian American community asking for the same thing."

There is only one problem: The board's suggestions were roundly rejected by the school naming committee. In fact, the panel, made up mostly of parents and teachers from Germantown, recently drew up its own list, with five names ranked in order of preference. Matsunaga and Cheung were fourth and fifth, and the committee added no other Asians to the list.

Yet the final decision is up to the Board of Education, which is set to vote tomorrow. Late last week, it seemed that there were enough votes for the board to christen the Spark Matsunaga Elementary School.

"There's a huge level of anger in the community about this," said Patricia Rapp, a Germantown PTA activist and member of the naming committee. "We feel that the name is being crammed down our throats."

Montgomery school boards have grappled for years with using school names to honor multiculturalism, as have other districts. In the early 1990s, it was county policy that names of minorities and women be considered for all new schools. Now, the county boasts schools named for environmentalist Rachel Carson, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, baseball Hall of Famer Roberto Clemente and Cherokee scholar Sequoyah.

That policy expired, allowing communities to choose place names such as Shady Grove and North Bethesda. Two years ago, a policy was set in place allowing for community input but letting the board propose names, too. For some board members, school names are a clear way of recognizing the growing diversity of a school district that no longer has a majority racial or ethnic group among students.

In Germantown, the committee's top choice would be to name the school for Lillian B. Brown, a retired black teacher who taught for years at the segregated Germantown Colored Elementary School. Montgomery NAACP President Linda Plummer calls Brown, 89, "an institution" in the county. The one-room schoolhouse was a half-mile from where the new school is going up.

There is another connection: When the one-room school was closed in 1950, Brown and her students moved to Longview Elementary School. Longview now teaches special education students, and those students will move to the new Germantown school when it opens.

"Without a doubt, Lillian Brown is the one person with the greatest connections to our community, and this may be our one chance to honor her," Rapp said. The panel is sympathetic to the desire to recognize the Asian community, she said, just not at the Germantown school.

The committee's second choice is Phillips Farm Elementary School, a reference to the history of the property where it will be located. Its third choice would honor Lavinia M. Engle, the first Montgomery woman elected to the Maryland House of Delegates. (Engle was also one of the Board of Education's three choices.)

Further complicating matters, the Asian community is divided on the choice between Matsunaga and Cheung. A committee representing the major Asian ethnic groups in the county supports Matsunaga. But some, particularly Chinese and Korean residents, have expressed unease in supporting Matsunaga, who was born in Hawaii but whose surname name is Japanese.

"There will be different perspectives within any group of people," said Michael Lin, an education activist of Chinese descent. "Yes, there are Chinese Americans for whom any Japanese name reminds them of the atrocities of World War II. And that's unfortunate, because Spark Matsunaga was not Japanese. He was an American who fought in World War II. He was as American as anyone else."

Charles Han, past president of the Organization of Chinese Americans, said, of the names on the list, he supports Cheung. But maybe, he said, officials should start again and find a name that can unite the community.

"Why not someone like I.M. Pei? He's a famous architect," he said."Why are we in a hurry to do it this way?"

School board President Nancy I King (Upcounty), who supports naming the school for Brown, said the process has been such a mess that the board should stop naming schools for people, as some districts do.

"Rather than unite people, this has just divided them," she said. "We have enough controversies to deal with without having to go through this, too."

The majority of board members, it seems, disagree.

"I believe its time to name a school after an Asian American," said Patricia O'Neill (Bethesda-Chevy Chase). "I strongly believe in community input. But, in some cases, I really believe that doors have to be opened. The time is right"" (Manuel Perez-Rivas, The Washington Post, June 11, 2001).