Superintendent: Roofs Of Medfield Public Schools Are Safe

The roofs of the Medfield Public Schools have been inspected and deemed safe, according to Superintendent of Schools Robert Maguire. 

"We are in good shape and we are safe," said Maguire. "We took a lot of steps to ensure that."

Maguire told the School Committee at Monday's meeting that the school department met with the building inspector, fire chief and police chief to review and discuss issues of roofs, transportation and sidewalks conditions. 

"We started looking at the roofs probably a couple of weeks ago in terms of issues relating to drainage on roofs and access to equipment because of the snow that has accumulated," Maguire said. 

With the recent roof collapses happening around the area, many school districts have held discussions about closing schools in order to properly remove snow from the roofs. With four snow days on record already, Maguire wanted to properly evaluate the situation in Medfield before entertaining the idea of closing school.

"We don't want to close school if it is unnecessary," Maguire said. "We have worked very hard and very diligently with this issue. All the effort started on Friday and continued through the weekend."

The main focus during the inspections was drainage and snow load, or weight of snow, on the roofs. 

"We have researched all of the building plans and all building plans by code have regulations and roof capacities and snow loads," Maguire said. "We took steps to determine what our snow load is."

On Friday, Medfield's snow loads on school roofs were in the range of 18 and 19 pounds. Maguire said they continued to monitor that number and as of Monday, the snow load was down to 15 pounds. 

"Fifteen pounds is well within the limits," said Maguire. "General capacity of snow weight on roofs is 30 to 35 pounds, so as you can see from that number, we can still hold quite a bit of snow on our roofs."

Maguire credited School Committee Chair Tim Bonfatti and his assistance in assessing the roofs.

"Tim [Bonfatti] was a great resource with his background in construction," Maguire said. "Had over a dozen conversation with him during this process. We had contractors in to open up our drainage systems to provide drainage roots to avoid buildup." 

Maguire also praised the work of the town's DPW and Police Chief Robert Meaney Jr., saying the town is lucky to have Meaney and it says a lot for the town's government that all departments work so well together.