Three building evacuations in several weeks have intensified pressure on Howard County Public Schools to move up major work at Centennial High School, where renovation plans and an addition have funding allocated for projects beginning with fiscal year 2032, with projections extending into the 2030s. Students told the Board of Education that repeated disruptions and deteriorating facilities are interfering with learning and raising safety concerns, according to WMAR-2 News and Patch.
The recent incidents included a failed ceiling VAV box and a problem arising during sprinkler-system work, Cornell Brown told the board, as reported by WMAR-2 News. Students said the evacuations cost roughly two hours of classroom time, while Sylvia Johnson described a separate incident in which a classmate went to a hospital after inhaling smoke from a burning HVAC system. Those accounts explain the urgency of the students’ campaign, but they do not by themselves establish whether the incidents share a single technical cause.
Students also described broader conditions inside the 1977-era school, including aging bathrooms, ceiling damage, air-conditioning problems, leaks and uncomfortable classroom temperatures. Patch reported that Centennial renovation plans and an addition had funding allocated for projects beginning with fiscal year 2032 and described projections as extending into the 2030s, while WMAR-2 News reported that a chiller replacement was expected in late October. A chiller replacement could address one immediate system problem, but it is not the same as the comprehensive modernization students are seeking.
A long-running facilities problem
Centennial’s dispute fits a much older facilities challenge in the county. Howard County Public School System’s 2007 annual report identified “modernize aging school facilities” as a systemwide challenge, showing that concerns about aging buildings predate the current controversy, according to the HCPSS annual report. That historical reference does not demonstrate that deferred maintenance caused any particular Centennial evacuation, but it places the school’s complaints within a problem the district had already formally recognized nearly two decades ago.
Capital decisions involve competing projects
The renovation timetable also reflects a broader competition for school-construction dollars. Howard County’s proposed FY2026 capital budget described continued investment in multiple Board of Education priorities, including a $6.7 million renovation and addition at Dunloggin Middle School and a $12.6 million renovation and addition at Oakland Mills Middle School, according to the county’s FY2026 proposed capital budget. The budget documents the competing projects, but it does not explain precisely why Centennial is scheduled for 2036 or prove that any one project displaced it.
That distinction is central to the students’ demand. Their immediate evidence is the disruption they are experiencing now; the district’s response must address both short-term reliability and the unresolved long-term schedule. Until Howard County publishes a documented explanation for the 2036 date and identifies any interim work beyond the reported chiller replacement, it remains unclear how much of Centennial’s broader modernization can occur before the planned renovation.
For now, students including Joy Dong, Satvik Jain and Sylvia Johnson say they intend to keep pressing the Board of Education for earlier action. Their campaign has turned a series of building incidents into a broader question about how Howard County prioritizes aging schools—and how long students should wait for conditions they consider safe and functional.
