Members of the Howard County Council and Board of Education expressed frustrations with recent changes in the county’s school construction funding priorities during a joint meeting Oct. 11. Funding for construction and infrastructure projects is based on the facilities condition index, which serves as a ranking of Howard County public schools by building condition and has been especially prone to change in the last several months.

The council has been presented with three versions of the school system’s capital budget request since May, which council member Liz Walsh said is a problem because it gives the impression that decisions have been made without reliable information and with no accountability to impacted community members.

“This, to me, is a farce,” Walsh said. “There is no reliability, there is no accountability, there is no consistency across the numbers. The only thing that is consistent is that, year-by-year, the approved budget that comes here underinvests. ... We are never going to overcome any of this deficit by whatever device we choose if we do not actually follow through with what we put on these pieces of paper.”

The Board of Education voted on Sept. 28 to fund renovations and additions for Oakland Mills and Dunloggin middle schools instead of previously scheduled full replacement buildings for those schools.

Oakland Mills High School was not included in Superintendent Michael Martirano’s $75,738,000 proposed capital budget for fiscal 2025, which passed by a vote of 5-1 at the Sept. 28 meeting, with only Board of Education member Linfeng Chen voting against.

The decision to fully replace Dunloggin and Oakland Mills middle schools, made at the April 27 board meeting, was rescinded on Sept. 28, and an option to fund renovations and additions at each of the schools was passed instead. Board members Jen Mallo, Jolene Mosley, Yun Lu and Jacky McCoy carried the motion with a 4-2 vote on Sept. 28, with board members Robyn Scates and Chen voting against changing the April decision.

New schools should be built near the communities that attend them, Walsh said, and renovating older buildings won’t change the need for a new high school in Elkridge. Elkridge is in Howard’s first district, which Walsh represents.

“Nothing gets built,” Walsh said. “My Elkridge kids are on a bus to Guilford Park High School. I don’t know what the solution is — I’m happy to be part of it — but I know that this is not it.”

Howard County Board of Education Chair Antonia Watts, who did not attend the Sept. 28 meeting, said the school board will endeavor to do more preliminary work before future work sessions, but updates to this year’s budget underscore a funding deficit for school construction.

“Frankly, we don’t build schools fast enough,” Watts said, “so that’s the problem we’re struggling with. It’s not that we want to underserve a certain community or another community, it just that we don’t have the literal capacity to do the work that needs to be done.”

Council member David Yungmann said the way infrastructure is funded needs to change, with public-private partnerships being his preferred solution.

School board member Scates said she would support finding new partners as a measure to affect change.

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” Scates said.

Council member Christiana Rigby offered a different solution — she said increasing taxes, especially the property tax, could increase funding for the school system’s capital budget.

The capital budget request, which was approved by the school board on Sept. 28, was submitted to the state on Oct. 4 and presented to the state planning board on Oct. 5.

On Nov. 6, the Howard County Council is scheduled to review and vote on the capital budget. Nov. 30 is the last day to amend the county’s capital budget request.