All of C.R. Anderson will need a new roof within the next seven years, but the northwest corner of the school will get one this summer, school officials said Tuesday.

A new roof was one of the components of a facility assessment the Helena School District Board of Trustees heard during a work session Tuesday night at the middle school.

The roof was constructed when the building was built in 1965.

"That's pretty good, considering it was meant to last 20 years," said John Carter, the district's director of support services.

The portion slated for re-roofing this summer hasn't gone out to bid yet, but Carter estimated the price tag to be around $250,000.

A complete new roof on the building's 143,400 square feet is estimated to cost about $1 million, Carter said at the meeting.

One of the school's significant, and more obvious, deficiencies is the lack of adequate parking. There are fewer than 100 parking spots for the 90 employees and visitors.

A sufficient number of parking spots would be between 300 and 500, according to the Wyoming School Design Guidelines, which the Helena School District uses because Montana doesn't have any official educational-building guidelines.

The 44-year-old building is one of the few district facilities with a fire-suppression sprinkler system, and one of two sites with sprinklers throughout the building.

It's also close to the recommended building size for the number of students. The 9.7-acre school site, however, is 48 percent of the recommended site size.

The elevator in the building helps make the building ADA compliant, with deficiencies only on the playground and the Driscoll Field baseball field, Carter said.

Over the next 15 years, parking, irrigation wells, boilers, and flooring are on the list of building repairs or improvements at the school, with an estimated cost between $4.4 and $5.6 million.

Each month, trustees hear a facility assessment about the building where the work session is held. The next work session is at Kessler Elementary at 4 p.m. on March 24.

Alana Listoe: 447-4081 or alana.listoe@helenair.com