Baltimore County is betting hundreds of millions of dollars that building new high schools helps both communities and the county’s economic future.
But that high price has made those projects a story of promises delayed.
Towson High School was built in 1949. State Delegate Cathi Forbes ties its timeline to past presidents.
“It was built when Harry S Truman was president,” Forbes said. “It was added on to during the Eisenhower administration and the Johnson administration. And it was last renovated in 1998 when Bill Clinton was president.”
The school is one of the most crowded in the county. Forbes says it’s just not functioning properly.
“The sink doesn’t work in the art room,” she cites as an example. “But it’s ok because there’s a leak in the ceiling and a trash can there. So kids get water out of that trash can to clean their brushes.”
Forbes, a Democrat who represents Towson in the Maryland General Assembly, said that around 2016 advocates started pushing for a new Towson.
Forbes said, “They were calling it ‘new in 2022.’ They were hoping that by 2022 there’d be a new building here.”
It didn’t happen. But it is now.
On Thursday county officials will have a ground breaking for a new Towson High School. Although calling it a ground breaking is a bit of a stretch. Work has been going on for months and there’s already a huge hole in the ground.
Baltimore County is now paying the piper for decades of neglect. It’s simultaneously building three new high schools. Total cost, which it shares with the state, is estimated at more than $740 million. Towson High School’s part of that figure is $288 million.
“For a lot of years in Baltimore County we had the growth areas of Owings Mills, Reisterstown, Perry Hall, White Marsh,” said Baltimore County Council Chairman Mike Ertel. “We built a lot of schools in those growth areas and I think what we did is we kicked the can down the road on our older high schools that were inside the beltway or close to the beltway.”
When Johnny Olszewski ran for county executive in 2018 he promised to replace Towson, as well as Dulaney and Lansdowne High Schools. A new Lansdowne is expected to open next fall and Dulaney’s ground breaking is next month.
“I knew that if we didn’t set that as our goal we would have never gotten there,” Olszewski said. “And did it take longer than I would have hoped or expected? Yes. But am I glad that we’re finally getting it done? Absolutely.”
Olszewski, who stepped down as county executive in January when he won a seat in Congress, credits the Built to Learn Act of 2020 for making it possible. It was passed by the General Assembly and pumped more than $2 billion towards school construction statewide.
“I don’t envision any circumstance in which groundbreakings for new high schools would have been possible without Built to Learn,” Olszewski said.
But the need for big ticket spending on high schools isn’t over, and according to spokesman Dakarai Turner, the county’s share of the Built to Learn money has either been spent or assigned to projects.
Councilman Ertel, a Democrat who represents Towson, said Sparrows Point and Overlea need new buildings. According to a 2024 report, Overlea is at 122 percent capacity. Sparrows Point is at 130 percent.
And keep in mind this is a county that keeps warning that times are tight and that it’s trying to avoid raising taxes. It just balked at building a library in Middle River, saying it was too expensive. But Ertel said they have to figure out how to pay for new high schools.
“If you want to attract middle class taxpayers to a county you have to have school buildings that look like we care,” Ertel said.
Students will stay at Towson High during the construction. To help with that, two modular buildings, each containing ten classrooms, were placed on top of the school’s tennis courts. The project is expected to be finished in five years. The new school will have nearly 500 additional seats.
Del. Forbes said, “I’m so hopeful that the building will reflect the academic excellence that goes on inside, the hard work of our students and our teachers because it hasn’t for years.”
Two parts of the old building, the front facade and the auditorium, will remain. They’re protected from demolition because they are considered historic.
