By Tara Kyle
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
HELL'S KITCHEN— For over a year, the teens at the High School for Environmental Studies have had to make do with access to just a fraction of the school's 11,000 books. But on Friday, they found themselves with access to the entire collection, and additional high tech features, as the school's new library opened its doors for the first time.
"This is a very exciting day for all of us," City Councilwoman Gale Brewer said before cutting the ribbon at 444 W. 56th St. facility. "This was not an easy project, and the fact of the matter is, this school is really special."
The new library at the nearly 20-year-old school replaces an the old, crowded and dim former library which had aging, broken down computers and a scratched up white board, according to students. The old library also doubled as a classroom, requiring library-goers to accommodate classes in session.
"It was nothing compared to this," Stephanie Poon, a senior from the Lower East Side, said as she walked around the renovated space for the first time on Friday. "We're happy with this change."
The new library, which required a $700,000 grant from the City Council to create, includes a state of the art, interactive "smart board." The classroom tables are gone, replaced by new computers and a lounge space.
Librarian Veronica O'Hara's desk is now at a centrally-located workstation, a vast improvement from the former location at the back corner of the library where students used to have to struggle to find her.
"This is beyond anything I expected," O'Hara said.
Last year, while the new library was under construction, O'Hara had to work out of a small, shared office on the fifth floor. She put nearly all of the school's 11,000 books into storage, holding on to just 250 study guides and novels. She visited classrooms one by one, offering students tutorials on web resources and directing them to the New York public library as an alternative.
Junior Raisa Feliz of Washington Heights said she'll be able to get home to her family two hours earlier now that she no longer has to travel to the nearest public library branch to get her studying done.
Much of the credit for the new space, which is brightly painted in the school's official colors of green and white, goes to school principal Shirley Matthews, Brewer said.
"There aren't many libraries in the city this gorgeous," Brewer said. "You have to have a principal who is on the tiles, on the floor, the tables, the chair. None of this would have happened without a principal who stuck to it."
