If you walk around the exterior of Lake View Primary school, you’ll see that is has been given a new facelift, including new doors, new windows, new paint, new trim and new signage. But these are just the finishing touches on a much larger project to weatherize the school.

Contractors began weatherizing Lake View’s roof and exterior walls in March 2023 and finished the bulk of the work in September. Crews are still finishing a few final touchups.

In the months and years to come, most of PUSD’s school buildings will have their roofs and exteriors weatherized. 

“This roofing and weatherization project will basically do the entire outside shell of every district building where students are taught,” said Cody Chischilly, PUSD’s facilities director. “The idea is to have buildings that our maintenance crew can maintain when this is finished.”

Approximately 90% of the weatherization and roofing project will be paid for from a grant from the School Facilities Board (SFB). The high-end grant was procured by Chischilly, who has worked for PUSD since 2010.

“I’ve been working on these buildings for a long time, and I could see that they needed a lot of work,” said Chischilly. “I hate going to the district office to ask for money to make the improvements I see need to be done, so I went looking for a grant.”

The grant from the SFB is a big one. It differs from most other grants in that it doesn’t set forth a fixed amount of money; instead, it funds the project through to completion. The estimate to weatherize the high school alone could reach as much as $10 million.

The weatherization that each building receives will be in the millions of dollars, and thanks the grant procured by Chischilly, it’s money the school district won’t have to fund itself.

“The district’s capital funding alone isn’t enough to keep up with the level of maintenance that needs to be done,” said Chischilly. 

Receiving the SFB grant frees up capital and money that the school district can put toward other maintenance and improvement jobs.

The weatherization project is being done by outside contractors who specialize in this type of construction. The weatherization includes adding new doors and windows where needed, new shingles on the roof where needed, weather stripping along all doors and caulking added to all windows, all cracks in the roof or walls sealed, and the entire things covered with an elastic, durable paint. 

During the weatherization process, contractors dig down 4 feet below the ground surface and remove dirt away from the foundation. The wall of the building is then cleaned, dried and primed, and all cracks caulked and sealed. The final step is painting it with elastomeric paint, a specialty paint that blocks out moisture and contracts and expands with temperature fluctuations. 

On the roof, if contractors find spots where the white top or shingles need to be replaced, they replace it. At Lake View, contractors re-shingled the entire roof. Places that needed new paint received new paint. Places that needed new siding received new siding. Outside the library door, contractors tore out old wood beams and replaced them with steel beams.

Brian Henderson, principal for Lake View Primary, was impressed by the final outcome.

“It looks really great,” he said.

“Everything looks nice and clean. Even simple things such as placing rocks in concrete at the bottom of the gutters, so the water doesn’t splash out and create a mess. There was an amazing amount of attention to detail.

“One of my favorite parts of the weatherization is the front of the school. Obviously, we have new paint, new doors, new concrete, but this custom sign they made for us – which was designed by our art teacher, Erica Pullin – really makes it look great! It’s a really great piece that wasn’t planned but a spontaneous add-on we were able to include. The whole look of the building is beautiful.”

After contractors finished Lake View’s weatherization, a third party performed a final walkthrough and inspection in late September, and any areas that weren’t up to specification were brought to specification.

Before PUSD could qualify for SFB’s weatherization grant, inspectors ran assessments on the buildings to see if they actually needed weatherization. Many of PUSD’s buildings are decades old, and after years of exposure to the harsh northern Arizona elements they easily qualified.

One of the main tests the inspectors conduct is a Rylum test, which evaluates the permeability and coating of a building’s exterior surfaces. When conducting a Rylum test, inspectors press a tube filled with water against a building’s exterior wall and measure how quickly water from the tube is able to flow into the wall. Ideally, little or no water would leach from the tube into the wall, but that was not the case for any of PUSD’s buildings.

“Our buildings drank water,” said Chischilly. “The inspectors were amazed how quickly the water ran out of the tube. At first, they wondered if they had attached it right. You can imagine what that building took in when it rains.”

As the project moves forward, Page High School, Page Middle School, Manson Mesa High School and Desert View Intermediate schools will all receive the same weatherization and re-roofing treatment that Lake View received, all of which begins with new bids put out to contractors.      

“After the bid is put out to contractors, the contractors do an onsite walkthrough of the buildings,” said Chischilly. “This allows them to have a realistic idea of the amount of work required to complete the job.”

When the construction begins, a general foremen will be onsite almost every day to ensure things are moving forward in a safe, timely manner. Other times an architect or engineer will visit the site to do inspections and create documentation.

Because the roofing and weatherization is a large, district-wide task, Chischilly says it’s likely that multiple projects at multiple schools will be happening at the same time.

After a contractor is awarded the bid, it has to include a design plan for how the work will get done. Doing the weatherization and roofing work is far from a straightforward process. It’s nothing like constructing a new building on an empty lot. 

“The project has to be done around classes, summer school and all the other everyday things that happen at a school,” said Chischilly. “Yeah, there are a few hoops to jump through on this one.”

Chischilly estimates that all PUSD schools will be weatherized by the end of 2026. 

“Once it’s done, we’ll develop a maintenance plan for my crew and myself to help it last for decades to come.”