ELLICOTT CITY, Md. — A group of Centennial High School students feel their concerns about building conditions can’t wait until 2036.
“The time to act really is now. Don't necessarily do it for the present; do it for the future. Do it for the people who are learning to speak. Speak up for them while you can,” junior Satvik Jain said.
The school has experienced three evacuations recently leading to two hours of lost classroom time, students report.
“A lot of the student community is really fed up with these things because it makes it harder for us to learn, makes us less excited to come to school and it’s generally not a suitable environment,” Jain said.
“A student went to the hospital due to the smoke from the burning HVAC the other day,” junior Sylvia Johnson recalled.
Chief Operations Officer Cornell Brown explained at last week’s Board of Education meeting that one evacuation was due to an issue that came up while the sprinkler system was being worked on. Another was the failure of a VAV box within the ceiling.
“Nothing that you can avoid because we have those type of failures even on new systems,” Brown said. “But, we've been having some challenges obviously, over at Centennial High, being that the equipment is old.”
“I really cannot think of a part of the building that's not an issue, honestly. The bathrooms, the ceilings, the air conditioning, every part of it has some disrepair,” student president and senior Joy Dong said. “It feels really disheartening and discouraging for all the students who are really working hard in the building to not have the adequate resources.”
Brown reports they’re doing the best they can to maintain their systems, and Centennial is slated for a chiller replacement come late October.
Dong, Jain, and Johnson are part of a group of students mobilizing to push up what they say are desperately needed renovations.
They plan to keep showing up, speaking out and fighting for better.
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