Walking into Glenview Middle School in East Moline may feel like you're traveling back in time.
"Unfortunately, the buildings have gotten to a point now where we've got to give our students and our staff a much better learning environment. The windows aren't good. We don't have air conditioning in our buildings," East Moline Superintendent Kristin Humphries said.
It's a 56-year-old building that's showing its age. The lights in the hallways still make it seem dark, and the windows around the building aren't keeping the heat inside on those cold, Winter days.
"We've been wanting to do this for quite some time. They've been failing for quite awhile and it's an expense to keep maintaining them. So, it's just the funding we've been waiting on," East Moline Operations Director Jim Franks said.
It's not just external repairs that are coming, it's internal. The heating system is run through Windows 98, an obsolete program that's caused too many headaches.
District leaders hoped to get these repairs done before now with a 1% sales tax in Rock Island County, but voters rejected that measure twice, with the latest vote coming last spring.
"Ideally, if local option sales tax comes back and pass, we would be able to take care of this debt that we're borrowing on these bonds and continue to work on the other projects within one or two summers," Humphries said.
With the money through $8 million in bonds now in place, Glenview will get LED lights, new windows, a new boiler system and air-conditioning for the first time.
All of it is expected to be in place by the start of the next school year.
The work at Glenview Middle School will be used as a benchmark for how work through the other buildings will go. If this project is done efficiently, they'll take a look at the finances to see if they'll be able to tackle any other upgrades.
Humphries says he will know what kind of an impact these bonds will have on taxpayers after February 10th, when the District finds out if it will be awarded a $2 million grant through the State of Illinois.