The Oakland Mills community has been overlooked by the HCPSS Board of Education for decades, particularly when it comes to renovations. This is due to several factors, including Oakland Mills' lack of representation on the Board of Education for many years and its status as a minority-majority community. Oakland Mills High School was promised that renovations would start in 2027, but these plans were delayed by a decade in a recent Board of Education meeting.

This decision was motivated by a new "objective" ranking system that ranked Oakland Mills High School as a significantly lower priority. This is due to many reasons, one being the fact that the capacity of a school factors into 45% of the ranking. One fact remains: Oakland Mills High School has the highest amount of deferred maintenance costs of any school in Howard County (as of 2022). In the weeks leading up to the start of the school year, a wall in the girls' locker room collapsed, revealing mold, and the band room was also found to have mold. There hasn't been a single year during my four years at OM during which mold hasn't been found in the media center, leading to its closure for several weeks each school year. 

These delays in renovations mean that more students will have to suffer under a crumbling, mold-infested building. Sign now to let our Board of Education know that this is unacceptable and that we demand Oakland Mills renovations be pushed back to start within the next five years.