When St. Mary’s County Public Schools removed rooftop solar panels from George Washington Carver Elementary School this year, staff expected routine work at the end of a 15-year contract. Instead, they found a roof damaged beyond minimal repair.
The school system told the Board of County Commissioners Tuesday that the panels, installed in 2011 as part of the “Project Sunburst” solar initiative — one of the first of its kind at a Maryland school — had allowed significant water infiltration around their mounts. An infrared thermography study and core sampling in August found wet insulation and deteriorated roofing membrane across roughly 150 mounting points. The roof itself is only 20 years old, too young to qualify for the state’s standard school roof replacement funding, but officials said it can’t be left as is through the winter.
Rather than a full $7 million roof replacement, the school system is pursuing an emergency repair: stripping and replacing the wet insulation and applying a warrantied coating expected to last 10 years, at a cost of $978,996. The state’s emergency roof funding program — reserved for unforeseen conditions regular maintenance couldn’t have caught — is expected to cover $538,817 of that, with the school system paying $440,179 from its capital fund balance. The Board of Education has already approved the project; commissioners followed with a budget authorization contingent on final approval from Maryland’s Interagency Committee on School Construction on Oct. 8.
Work has to begin by Oct. 19 and finish by Dec. 1, since the repair coating requires temperatures of 55 degrees and rising to apply properly.
Commissioners questioned whether the school system had any recourse against the original solar contractor. Kim Howell of the Board of Education said the removal contract only obligated the vendor to leave the roof waterproof, not undamaged, and that the full extent of the damage wasn’t visible until the panels came off. Asked whether the district would consider rooftop solar again, Howell said: “In retrospect, where we are today, no.” The system’s ground-mounted solar arrays at other sites remain in place and are not affected.
The Carver repair adds to a broader wave of aging-infrastructure costs the school system flagged the same day — 16 school roofs and 15 HVAC systems are projected to need replacement within six years under the state’s own facility assessments, against a state funding allocation of roughly $4.8 million a year.
