School District U-46 is planning more than $10.6 million in school renovation and repair work, furniture purchases and playground equipment installation.

If the contracts are approved by the school board at its April 28 meeting, work would start in late May and be completed by late July.

Among the projects discussed at Monday’s board meeting, emergency generators are to be installed at Bartlett Elementary School in Bartlett and Clinton Elementary School in South Elgin and an emergency generator replaced at Hillcrest Elementary in Elgin at a total price of $1.72 million paid to Newcastle Electric.

Bartlett and Clinton Elementary don’t currently have emergency generators and Hillcrest’s was installed in 1998. Replacement parts are no longer available because of the unit’s age, officials said.

Northwest Contractors Inc. is to be paid $913,682 to replace water pipes and to upgrade bathroom flooring sinks, fixtures and toilet fixtures at Highland Elementary School in Elgin.

Highland was built in 1959 and has galvanized water pipes. Those will be replaced with copper pipes.

Varsity baseball and softball backstops at Bartlett, Elgin, Larkin, South Elgin and Streamwood high schools are going to be replaced to bring them up to current industry safety standards. Omni Commercial Group Inc. is slated to receive the $820,000 contract.

The current backstops are metal and range in height from 12 to 25 feet. With the installation of a netting backstop system reaching 30 feet high for softball and 40 feet high for baseball, spectators will be better protected and have better visibility.

George Sollitt Construction Co. is to be awarded a $3.8 million contract to upgrade Bartlett High School automotive and engineering labs and to modernize the school’s culinary arts and health care science rooms.

“A lot of things are compliance related,” said Sheila Downs, District U-46’s executive director of facilities. “So there are a lot of safety items that go into effect. We’re going to separate the engineering and automotive spaces to make sure the exhaust is done properly. We’re going to replace the flooring, the lighting and such.

“In the culinary spaces, we’re going to be doing very similar work in that we are upgrading some of the appliances and are going to replace flooring and lighting as well.”

Some of the roofing at Coleman Elementary School in Elgin is to be replaced, at a cost of $1.64 million to be paid to Crowther Roofing and Sheet Metal.

Those roof sections were last replaced in 1986 and 1997, officials said. The replacement roofing will have a 20- to 25-year lifespan.

A new playset at Hilltop Elementary in Elgin and new pre-K playsets at Horizon Elementary in Hanover Park, Laurel Hill Elementary in Hanover Park, Sunnydale Elementary in Streamwood, Timber Trails Elementary in Hoffman Estates, Sycamore Trails Elementary in Bartlett, Willard Elementary in South Elgin, Hilltop Elementary in Elgin, Fox Meadow Elementary in South Elgin and Coleman Elementary in Elgin are to be installed.

Two contracts, one for $93,308 and the other for $1.4 million will be awarded to GameTime and Cunningham Recreation at the next school board meeting.

Once ordered, the equipment will take 12 to 16 weeks to arrive, officials said. However, the district has several grounds crew members who are certified playground inspectors.

“This saves the district a lot of money because we are able to install our playgrounds,” Downs said.

Finally, the board is expected to approve $179,360 in contracts with five vendors for preschool furniture. While some of the furniture will replace items at currently being used by pre-K programs, much of it is for new programs opening in the 2025-26 school year.

There will be two new pre-K classrooms at Coleman in Elgin, two at Fox Meadow in South Elgin and one at Timber Trails in Hoffman Estates.

Mike Danahey is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.