With student-driven fanfare, Baltimore County Wednesday marked the start of a $300 million project that’s been a long time coming: A new Dulaney High School.

“I am so excited,” said Christy Senita, the school’s choral director.

“I’ve been working here a while, math numbers, and this has been an effort ever since I started here.”

Senita’s chamber choir, a combination of sophomores, juniors and seniors, sang the Star Spangled Banner. The marching band performed before that.

Senita said, “To have good things for the kids like they deserve is just the best thing in the world.”

There is enough space on the Dulaney campus that they can build the new school, which is expected to open in four years, while the students stay in the old one.

The county is building three new high schools, Dulaney, Towson and Lansdowne with a total cost projected to be more than $740 million. County officials say they are now paying for decades of neglect.

Maryland Congressman Johnny Olszewski, who was Baltimore Country Executive when the Dulaney project was green-lighted, said there is more work to be done to replace aging schools.

“We have to sustain this investment if we want to have a world-class jurisdiction where people continue to want to live, to work, to raise their family,” Olszewski. “We are on a great glide path based on the work that we’ve done together these past six years when I was in office and continuing now.”