Ceilings leak and the tiles fall. Mold spores appear on library shelves and pages of books. Classrooms are either sweltering hot or freezing cold.

These scenarios and more aren’t uncommon at Oakland Mills High School, among the oldest schools in Columbia. Last May, the community celebrated its 50th anniversary.

“We also celebrated our HVAC system‘s 50th anniversary,” said Jake Favero, a junior and president of the student government association at the Howard County school.

For years, Oakland Mills High has been on a waitlist for updates and renovations, with a timeline that was perpetually pushed back as families from other schools lobbied to get theirs done first.

But now the school system is trying something new to help clear that backlog and put schools like Oakland Mills on a more predictable schedule for upgrades that’ll help students focus on learning instead of the conditions of the aging buildings.

This spring, the Howard County Board of Education approved a new process that will replace the constant reshuffling of renovation and construction plans with a data-driven scoring system. Schools will be prioritized primarily based on the building’s condition and whether it needs to expand to relieve overcrowding — not by whose voices are loudest.

The idea is to take emotions out of these decisions, which in recent years have become contentious. Just last week, at a meeting that was supposed to be about redistricting, a community member quickly tried to change the topic to Centennial High School’s long-awaited renovation and additions.

Students, too, take offense to when their schools face the same maintenance or overcrowding problems year after year. Oakland Mills sophomore Ella Knight said she sometimes has to step out into the hallway to stop coughing from the stuffy air in her science classroom.

“We laugh about it, we joke about it, but it hurts our feelings that our school is in this state,” Knight said. “We’re not blind, we see them [school system officials] building new schools and spending money for other renovations.”

Howard County Public School System buildings have an approximately $198 million backlog of deferred maintenance, the term for when building upkeep isn’t done in a timely fashion. To fund building updates, the school system uses its capital budget, the pot of money set aside for things like replacing a school’s heating-and-cooling system. The new process slightly favors buildings in poor condition over the ones that need more space.

“Processes for past budgets have created instability and uncertainty for projects, the school system and the community,” said Dan Lubeley, the executive director of capital planning and construction for the school system, at a March Board of Education meeting.

The school board approved the new process to begin in the 2027 budget year. But some board members asked about grandfathering-in ongoing shovel-in-the-ground projects and future ones that have allocated funding.

Cornell Brown, the school system’s chief operating officer, said in an email that projects under contract for construction are moving ahead despite the new ranking system, and that funding has been appropriated for three future projects at Oakland Mills Middle, Dunloggin Middle and the Faulkner Ridge Center.

Whether it will change the fate of Oakland Mills High is still unknown. As of right now, the renovation and addition project is set to be completed in September 2031 with a $181 million price tag. Funding is set to kick in during the 2027 budget year.

“I wouldn’t want to make assumptions relative to the results, outcomes, or the decisions that will be made,” Brown said in an email. Schools still need to be analyzed according to the new criteria.

Oakland Mills senior Malia Edelson began testifying before the school board about the state of Oakland Mills High when she was in eighth grade. Years ago, she said, she’d be one of just a couple of Oakland Mills students to testify.

“But now, it’s become a flood of people,” she said. “We are actually showing up as a community now.”

As an orchestra student, Edelson has performed at a few Howard County high schools. Out of all of them, she said Oakland Mills “needs a new auditorium.”

The current auditorium is small, has cracks in the walls, lighting issues and temperature quality problems.

“I don’t see these things at Hammond High School. The sound bounces better, it’s more full and the lights are better,” she said.

The Hammond High community went through its own battles to get a renovation and addition that was completed in December 2023. The school had been waiting nearly a decade for its promised renovations when it was almost delayed again in 2019, but the school board pushed the project through.

At Oakland Mills, there are five stairs leading to the auditorium. There’s no elevator or ramp, so students have to go all the way around the school to bring heavy band equipment into the auditorium. Those who can’t use stairs have to do the same.

Oakland Mills High junior Liz Sarfo, who is the incoming vice president of the student government association, describes the building as “disgustingly humid.” In the two weeks leading up to spring break, the hallways in particular were heavy with humidity. The limited classroom windows and lack of natural light make the building feel less like a school and more like a prison, Sarfo said.

“It’s a bleak school building,” Sarfo added.

Edelson is graduating this month, so she will never walk the halls of a new Oakland Mills High as a student again. But students after her will, maybe even her sister, an eighth grader.

“I want to make sure Oakland Mills High School has an environment that is safe and not looked down upon,” she said.

Like Edelson, Favero has a younger sister, a sixth grader. He hopes that when his sister gets to Oakland Mills High things will be “smooth sailing,” and she won’t have to continuously advocate for the building like he did.

“Why do we have to do this?” Favero asked. Students, he said, “deserve not to have to beg for the bare minimum learning environment.”

This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Liz Sarfo's last name.