New Kensington-Arnold awards $1.9M in contracts for roof work at 3 schools

New Kensington-Arnold School Board awarded contracts totaling just over $1.9 million to replace roofs at three of the district’s four schools.

The board voted 7-0 on Tuesday to accept a $1.4 million bid from David M. Maines Associates for the work at H.D. Berkey and Martin elementary schools and at Valley Junior-Senior High School.

Board members Robert Pallone and Eric Doutt were absent.

Maines, of Mifflin County’s Lewistown, was the lowest of six contractors to bid on the project. The others were Miller-Thomas-Gyekis, Triangle Roofing, Slippery Rock Roofing, Tuscano Maher Roofing and Pennsylvania Roofing Systems. Slippery Rock Roofing bid on the Martin building only, according to the district.

A separate contract for roofing materials totaling about $490,000 was awarded to Garland DBS. The district will also pay for freight, estimated at $3,400.

The work is expected to start at the end of the school year in June and be finished before the start of the 2021-22 school year, acting Superintendent Jon Banko said.

District Business Manager Jeff McVey said the entire roof at Martin, 24,400 square feet, will be replaced, while 13,100 square feet encompassing most of Berkey and its entrances will be replaced. At Berkey, about 6,600 square feet was done in 2008 and is under warranty.

At the junior-senior high school, 41,150 square feet of roof will be replaced. That area covers the cafeteria, kitchen, board room, gym, locker rooms, pool and entrance canopy. The auditorium and remaining roof surfaces were replaced in 2014, McVey said.

Work to replace the roof at the district’s fourth school, Roy A. Hunt Elementary, is already underway. That contract was first awarded in April.

In August, the work at Hunt more than doubled in size to cover the school’s entire roof, increasing in cost from $740,000 to $1.55 million.

Banko said work is progressing at Hunt. He could not say when it is expected to be finished.

The district borrowed $4 million in a bond issue this year in part to pay for the roof work. About $2.6 million will go toward the roof work, including about $693,000 of the cost at Hunt and the entire $1.9 million cost for Martin, Berkey and the junior-senior high school, McVey said.

McVey said the district has not identified any specific projects to use the remaining $1.41 million in bond funds. The district has three years to identify and use the bond funds, he said.