Oakland Mills High School community members quickly left the Howard County Board of Education meeting Thursday after the board affirmed its plans to exclude the renovation of the school in the district’s capital budget request for the upcoming fiscal year.

In November, the board voted to delay promised renovations for Oakland Mills High to fund construction of a new elementary school, renovations to Patapsco Middle School and HVAC renovations for Atholton Elementary School. The decision sparked an uproar, with students holding walkouts and community members demonstrating at the County Council and board of education. Despite the advocacy, the board’s vote Thursday upheld its November decision.

“We don’t have enough money to do everything, so we have to make a hard choice. We made that hard choice back in November, and it really did break the hearts of some of our communities, and I acknowledge that,” Board Chair Jen Mallo said. “And it was consistent with what we said we would do with going through the prioritization, and you can disagree with that, and it doesn’t make us bad people, and it doesn’t make us not care.”

Students and staff have shared experiences at the school with pipes bursting, light panels falling, black sludge coming out of the ceiling, lead in the drinking water, asbestos in the HVAC unit, extreme temperatures and mold in several areas. The school was slated for renovation that was long-awaited, but the school system’s new prioritization list for projects brought the focus to the other projects.

Board member Jolene Mosley remained steadfast in her support for the high school renovation, raising concerns about the school conditions and a lack of equity. Despite initially voting for the delay of the renovations, Jacky McCoy also voiced her support, sharing concerns that the data used to assess projects is only “as good as the input that you give.”

Mosley and McCoy were the only two who voted against the capital budget.

“The second that equity speaks and we’re making a decision on equity, it’s always something else, always,” Mosley said. “And I really feel like our county is better than that, but every time we put our value into what our beliefs … are, it trips up and we never follow through.”

But other board members shared concerns about straying from the prioritization list and the data after the work had been done to compile it, and the board agreed on it.

“We’ve done the picking and choosing. We’ve done … what surfaces to the top or who sends the most emails. We’ve done that before,” board member Antonia Watts said. “And the hope here was that we could actually have a data-driven list that took equity into account, that took deferred maintenance into account and built us a system that we agreed as a board to move forward with — the list.”

The board’s approved capital budget request for the fiscal year 2027, which starts July 1, will be submitted to Howard County Executive Calvin Ball.

Marissa Yelenik contributed to this article.

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