The doors are open at what will be the new Eastside Connections School.

A Dumpster sits outside the front entrance, the front door propped open. Natural light spills into the building and a light breeze blows against a sign-in sheet for volunteers who have been hard at work inside classrooms, doorways and hallways preparing the building for a new beginning. A sign hangs on the wall next to the table. It says, “You can when you believe you can.”

“We’re mainly concentrating on 10 rooms right now on the main floor,” said Bill Prenkert, who has been helping coordinate volunteer efforts at the school.

The Niles Community Schools Board of Education recently voted to reopen the school, just a year after it closed, as a magnet school that will embrace the themes of project based learning — the same theory of instruction that will be utilized at the New Tech Entrepreneurial Academy at Niles High School.

Since the decision was made, more than 170 students have been signed up to take classes at the K-5 school, the school’s seven teachers have been chosen and they’ve even picked their classrooms.

One of those teachers is Prenkert’s wife, Bonnie. Both have their master’s degrees in education, Prenkert said. They’re both supporters of project-based learning and since he has the whole summer off, he figured he would donate his time to the school where he was once a student.

“I went to school here as a grade school kid. I lived five or six blocks over toward Lake Street,” he said. “I’d hate to see a monument like this torn down.”

Inside, where art projects and poster board once adorned the walls, the paint has been stripped. Layers of dry erase board upon green chalk board have been removed to expose the original blackboards from when the school was first built in 1939. Prenkert said those boards will be kept in place, volunteers want to preserve as much of the historical aspects of the school as possible, but they will be covered with brand new whiteboards.

The hardware has been pulled from the old, original doors.

“They are going to be stripped and restored to their natural color,” Prenkert said.

Classrooms will be painted according to the school’s new color palette of blue, gold and white. Old ceiling tiles have been removed, along with old light fixtures, for a clean, linear look. The floors wait to be carpeted. So far, materials have been provided by the district, Prenkert said, though donations are expected from local businesses. The district is also hoping to pass a measure at their June 27 meeting to utilize sinking funds to help the project along.

There’s a thought process behind the paint, Prenkert said. Each room will be painted alike, the idea being to give students a sense of consistency as they move from one classroom, one grade, to another.

It has been a good group of both teachers and parents who have been coming in to help, Prenkert said, along with a couple of school board members.

They’ve been working since late May and according to Kim Bagby, another volunteer leader and one of the teachers who will start at the school next year, the goal is to have the classrooms finished by early August, with the hallways to follow. Even if they don’t finish up by the tentative deadline, Bagby said the school will be ready when students start in September.

“If it means I have to go in there and work around the clock, then I will go in there and make sure that happens,” she said. “It will be ready.”

There is an immense amount of dedication on behalf of these volunteers to bring the school back to life. That is something they are quick to make clear. As emotional as closing the school was just one year ago — there were parents and students picketing outside the school and at school board meetings — it seems as though it’s just as emotional for all of those involved to see it open again.

In one of the rooms under construction, Laura Proctor, Penne Matthews and Janie Townsend are busy painting the walls a bright, new white.

Matthews and Townsend are instructional assistants for the district now and they worked at Eastside school in the past, Townsend for 14 years, Matthews for 12 years.

“I’m basically here for the love of the school,” Townsend said. “I’m just so excited it’s going to be filled with children again.”

Matthews said it was also a love for the school that had her on a ladder, slathering white paint along the windowsills.

“Knowing the kids in the neighborhood are going to have their school back,” she said. That is her motivation.

For her part, Proctor will be starting school at Eastside in the fall as well, as a second grade teacher. For the last five years, she’s taught second grade at Ballard Elementary School.

It was a bittersweet end to the year, she said, but she’s excited to start work in her new classroom.

“The possibilities are endless,” Proctor said. “And that’s what’s so exciting.”

What’s so inspiring, she added, is the amount of time being donated to the project by members of the community, teachers and parents.

Proctor is also excited about the project based learning, being something she said she studied in college. She and the other incoming teachers have a set schedule of meetings throughout the summer but they’re in constant contact through email.

“We all really have a drive to be here,” she said. “We all are willing to put in the work we know is here and is coming.”

Bagby also had high praise for the teachers who will stand before the first group of students at the magnet school, calling them “the most talented group of people I could be working with. (They are) very dedicated people who give over 100 percent consistently.”

Bagby said volunteers are welcome and can come sign up at the school during work hours, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 4 to 8 p.m.