PEABODY – Work on the Higgins Middle School roof will continue through the end of the week, said Peabody School Business Manager Mike Musto.”We were hoping it would have been done by the time (students) came back to school,” he said. “But with the weather and the snow, it didn’t happen.”Replacement of the old, leaky roof began in mid-December, just before the start of winter break. The need was dire and time was not on the city’s side.”This had to be done now,” said Musto. “It’s not a good time, obviously, to do a roof, but it had to be done because the leaks were so extensive they were disrupting classes.”Superintendent Milt Burnett was told by contractors over the summer that the roof was beyond repair and wouldn’t last through the winter.”If it wasn’t done, we were going to potentially have more severe damage,” he said last month.So, rather than pushing their luck even further and waiting for aid from the Massachusetts School Building Authority, school officials decided to use money from the city’s capital improvements fund to get the job done. Gibson’s Roofs of Hanover was the chosen contractor with a bid of $413,000 – well under original projections.The crew has completed the installation of a new roof above both gyms, but Musto expects the last of the project, the roof above the science wing, to be finished by Friday pending Mother Nature.More extensive work is needed for the remainder of the roof, but school officials said they will hold off until they hear back from the state regarding their request for aid. If and when the school is granted the funding, Burnett said he’s hopeful to be reimbursed for at least 50 percent of the cost of the current project.When finished, the new roof is expected to last for approximately 20 years.