Library Closing Time a Hard Transition for Smithtown West

             As school started and the new year began to transcend, students at Smithtown High School West were faced with homework and projects.  For some kids, the library after school is a place for them to do their work and meet up with other students for studying.

Due to the budget cuts, Mrs. Masrour says that the library now closes at 2:30 p.m. this year, when last year it didn’t close until 3:00 p.m. This has been a problem for most of the students that use the library regularly.

    Jackie Falk, a student here at Smithtown High School West, said that, “it is really annoying and I find that I need more time to work on my work.”  With the amount of homework and projects that are given at Smithtown West, time is valuable to the students and they need to use library time as often as possible. Kids have a hard time concentrating at home with multiple distractions, which is why they sometimes choose to stay after school to do their homework, but if the library closes at 2:30, the students only have a maximum of thirty minutes to try to get all of their homework done.
           “The staff cut last year caused the library to lose one librarian and now three are left which leaves two for the morning and one in the afternoon,” says Mrs. Masrour. Since there is a lack of librarians, the time for after school library has been significantly cut from last year. The library is open 5 days a week.

Mr. Coady is planning to make changes that are going to be released at a later date. Teachers that currently work in the building have been walking around the halls making sure that students have something to do after the library closes-while they are waiting for the bus-but students need quiet time inside of a library where they can ask a librarian for help with whatever they are working on. Kids become bored and reckless while waiting for the bus and bad things are bound to happen. If the students have a place to sit and do their work while waiting for the bus it can benefit the teachers and the students.                                              

    As the school year progresses, Mrs. Masrour states that the chances of having the library close at a later  time is “very unlikely this year .” She also stated that “the librarians didn’t make the decision, the budgets did.”  For the students at Smithtown High School West, this new time change at the library will be a hard transition to get used to.