Festus R-6 officials have agreed to spend a total of $1,536,900 on improvements at the Festus Elementary and Festus Middle schools.
The Festus Board of Education voted 6-0 Jan. 18 to spend $1.49 million on HVAC replacement and roof repairs projects at the elementary school, and in another motion the board voted 6-0 to spend another $46,900 on HVAC replacement at the middle school. Board member Marcus Shepherd was absent from the meeting.
Superintendent Nicki Ruess said both projects will be completed over the summer break.
“We anticipate both projects finishing by the start of the 2024-2025 school year,” she said.
Ruess said the district used the EducationPlus cooperative bidding program to select Tremco, a national roofing and maintenance company, to oversee the replacement of two HVAC units and the roof repairs at Festus Elementary.
The HVAC replacement will cost $1 million and the roof work will cost $490,000.
“EducationPlus is a cooperative purchasing program,” she said. “It’s a competitive bidding program that gets us the lowest bid.”
Ruess explained that the elementary’s current aging HVAC system led to problems with a portion of the school’s roof.
“This will impact a wing of the elementary, which is 22,260 square feet of the building,” she said. “This will impact about 20 classrooms.”
She said the school has 19 small HVAC units on that rooftop, and those will be removed and replaced with the two larger units.
“They (the old HVAC units) are old and rusted and causing leakage onto the roof,” she said.
“When we remove the units, it will leave holes in the roof, so we’ll have to do restoration to the roof. Tremco is overseeing it all.”
Ruess said district officials bid out the HVAC replacement project at Festus Middle School, and Integrated Facility Services in Fenton won with the lowest of five bids submitted for the project.
“This is to replace a rooftop unit that serves six classrooms,” she said. “The old unit kind of quit by the beginning of December. We have a temporary unit for them that is functioning.”