As volunteers work continuously on the interior of Eastside Connections School, district officials are making a few connections of their own.

The school’s registration netted more than 170 students. Out of those students, who registered to attend the school next year, an estimated 18 to 20 did not attend school in the Niles Community Schools district last year.

That means, Curry explained, those students could be students who live in Niles but chose to go to school outside the district last year, or possibly they are students who are coming into the district for the first time.

That’s something school board officials say shows the district is on the right track to attracting more students to district schools and keeping them there.

“That tells me that there’s parents out there craving a school plan that involves them more intimately with the education of their student, of their child and that this magnet school concept provides that,” said Jeff Curry, who serves on the district’s board of education.

Kathy Zeider, who also serves on the district’s board of education and said she was the “only board member that did not feel 100 percent confidant in the closing” of the school a year ago, couldn’t be happier to see it being reopened in the fall.

“Now that I’m seeing Eastside reopened, the community needed that school …” she said. “I think Eastside represents what Niles was founded on — community. I think it opens the door to a new way of learning for their kids because the teaching style is different. I’m looking forward to that.”

The district has been investing into Eastside right alongside improvements to the high school and the creation of the New Tech Entrepreneurial Academy.

It’s that investment, Curry said, that’s going to show positive results in the long run.

“We’re always interested in creating something better for the kids first and foremost,” he said. “By doing that we should be able to attract more kids to the district and keep them in the district.”

Curry calls what’s happening at Eastside a “grassroots” style movement. Parents are joining teachers in volunteering their time at the building and have agreed to provide their own transportation. Even the seven teachers chosen to teach those students are donating time in cleaning up the school, prepping it for its opening and, Curry said, “specifically applied to teach there.”

Zeider believes reopening the school was a necessity.

“It wasn’t a desire to recreate Niles, to make it look good so we would have the edge, so that people would come back and our funds would be raised,” she said. “That’s a bonus.”

Rather the elementary schools in the district that took on Eastside students began experiencing overcrowding.

“The kids were stressed and the teachers were stressed,” she said.

Both Zeider and Curry say school officials will be keeping a close eye on the data that comes out of Eastside, to see just how effective their new teaching styles will be.

“This is data driven,” Zeider said. “This is going to be scrutinized, reevaluated constantly.”

“I think they’re going to start to seeing the benefits rather soon,” Curry said. “Within the first month or so and then I think they’re going to be able to see the data once our kids start testing.”