LAKE HUNTINGTON, NY — At its meeting on January 10, the Sullivan West School Board discussed a project to replace or repair the roof of the 1961 addition to the elementary school in Jeffersonville. Vice President Lucas Arzilli reminded board members that at the previous meeting they rejected a general construction bid; part of that bid was the roof project. 

Arzilli, who said he thinks the roof needs to be replaced, said the roof reinforcement that would be required to replace the roof and add new installation was substantially rejected in the general construction bid.

The construction management company CSArch asked for bids from subcontractors to have the roof recovered or resurfaced. This would involve repairing pieces of the roof where there is moisture damage and where new installation is needed. The work would also involve re-decking and putting a membrane over the whole roof, as well as describing what warranties for that work would look like. Arzilli said the school board might not be able to approve doing something like this, because the original request to the public for the money was to replace the roof.

The roof is currently holding up. With the in-house team’s work to seal a lot of the leaks and keep the roof functioning well, it is performing much better than it was, Arzilli said.

Now the board has three options: they could replace the roof if there’s enough money; they could potentially go back to the public and amend the language to say the funding could be used to recover or resurface the roof—the most economical option—or, if there isn’t enough money, the board could go back to the public to ask for additional funds. The board will continue to discuss those three options in the future.

The board also discussed other completed repairs as well as those that still need to be made in the schools. The repair of windows is almost complete in the elementary school building. A recent issue with the generator, triggered by a power failure a couple of weeks ago, has been taken care of. The library windows were replaced, but still need some more minor work to be completed. The locker room work should be complete and closed out soon, and only one of four quadrants of the gym windows has been installed so far.

The in-house team was able to replace loose tiles in several rooms, stairway corridors and in and around the second floor of the high school building. The tiles may have been loose because they were installed incorrectly from the beginning. The in-house team may have resolved the problem with the tiles and have saved the school a lot of money.