Tuesday, October 15, 2024
By Scott Bellile
The New London School Board unanimously approved a $522,020 bid to redo the roof at Parkview Elementary School this summer.
Walsdorf Roofing Company of Kiel was awarded the project to replace 34,000 square feet of roofing on all sections but the 2009 building addition to the east. The job will include a 30-year warranty.
Also bidding on the project were two Wisconsin roofing contractors, Northern ($560,550) and Pioneer ($565,875).
School District of New London Business Services Director Joe Marquardt told the Press Star of the importance of the project: “The roof is protecting all the contents below it, so whether that’s our students, our staff, our equipment, our gym floors, it’s protecting everything in the building. So on a flat roof we want to make sure it’s as structurally sound as possible.”
Money from the voter-approved $2 million referendum in 2014 will fund the majority of the project. Dollars from the school district’s operating budget will pick up the remainder of the cost.
Marquardt said drawing dollars from two sources allows the district to tackle more roofing than it could have using just referendum dollars alone.
School board member Chris Martinson, who also sits on the Capital Projects, Energy Conservation and Facilities Committee, said there are no urgent concerns to address with the roof, but it has reached its lifespan and the time has come to repair it.
Martinson said the committee’s long-term plan is to repair the flat roofs at Lincoln Elementary School and New London High School, which were both built in the 1990s. Sugar Bush Elementary School’s roof remains in good shape because it is a pitched roof, he said.
Using referendum dollars, the school district repaired the roof at New London Middle School over the course of two summers in 2015 and 2016. In summer 2017, the Readfield Elementary School roof was redone.
The 2017-18 academic year is the final year of the referendum. Roof work comprises $1.4 million, or 70 percent, of the referendum, while the rest has funded school security upgrades and literacy resources.
The school board is in the midst of discussing whether another referendum should be proposed to fund more facility maintenance at all the schools.
