SV High School roof to be replaced

St. Vincent High School is undergoing changes this summer. To see those changes, a person will have to look up. The school is replacing the roof this summer and for one big reason.
“The roof can leak and has in the past,” Father Joe Geders said. “That’s obviously not what you want during the school year or at any time.”
Chad Wheeler of the St. Vincent Educational Foundation said that the roof had been repaired in the past.
“We put a second roof on there and it was coming to the point where we about had to do it again,” Wheeler said.
The roof, which is considered “flat,” will be changed to a gable style when it is finished and has several advantages. The high school will match the rest of the campus and church with metal stud trusses and roofing.
“First, water can no longer just sit up there and destroy the integrity of the roof, because the design is one that involves trusses and it is slanted and the water should slide right off.” Geders said. “The second is that it protects the outside of the building, especially during the winter, because it provides an overhang. We hope the roof can provide a longevity to the high school.”
The project is estimated to cost approximately $1 million, and a majority of the project will be funded out of endowments. However, the St. Vincent Educational Foundation has started a “Raising’ the Roof” fund so as not to exhaust the entire amount of the endowment.

“We are looking to raise about $200,000 and have over half of that amount,” Wheeler said. “We have had a lot of generosity when it comes to this project. We started raising money at our St. Patrick auction, and we had had a lot of people donate outside of that as well.”
Geders noted that the project is a large undertaking for the school, but it is a project that was much needed.
“We could have went with another flat roof at about half the cost, but I feel like we would have been right back in the same boat years down the road,” he said. “A flat roof would have been about half the cost, but this new roof will improve our school greatly.”
Geders wasn’t only talking about physically either when it came to improvements.
“I think this will obviously improve our school physically and also educationally,” he said. “We want to be known as one of the premier schools in the area, and this roof helps us do that. We have great teachers at St. Vincent, we want the building to match that as well.”
The project will take several months and will hopefully be finished by the beginning of the next school year.
“We are very excited about this new roof,” Geders said. “It will improve the school greatly and I think it is one of many things that we have coming up down the road at St. Vincent that we have to be thrilled about. This is a step in helping St. Vincent stay around for a long time.”