Can a school be too nice?

"It just doesn't feel like Ambridge when you walk in here," senior David Brown said, standing in a gleaming hallway of the brand-new $45 million Ambridge Area High School.

And indeed, if feeling like Ambridge means dark, moldy, cramped, worn, dungeon-like and graffiti-marked, then the new school will certainly feel like something else.

Students, teachers and staff moved their belongings from the 80-year-old high school building before the Christmas break and started the new year in their new school last Thursday.

"I like it; don't get me wrong," David said. "It's beautiful. A bit too bright, though."

Bright it is, though "too bright" would be a judgment call. The main entrance has a bank of windows with a stunning end zone view of the football field, and leads to a broad, airy, daylight-filled main lobby with a gymnasium on one side and a state-of-the-art auditorium on the other.

With computer-controlled lighting and backdrops, capacity for professional-grade audio and video recording and a vast stage capable of hosting high-quality professional shows, the auditorium is one of the new school's showpieces -- which is fitting, given Ambridge's traditional excellence in music and performing arts.

"The tech guys are stoked," Jenn Zuratovic, a senior who served as tour guide, said of the stage crew members, who have never worked with such equipment before. She is in the spring musical, and said the cast members are beside themselves, anticipating christening the theater department's new home.

The band -- including the famous steel drum corps, which earns Ambridge national recognition -- gets its share of attention, too, with a two-story-high band/chorus room with a view over the steeples of several town churches and enough room for 250 to rehearse at once. There is also a separate room dedicated to the steel drums.

"I think the band deserves it for all we've done," said Katie Metz, a senior member of the band auxiliary.

The science and technology departments are on the ground floor, and include a recording studio below the stage. The school district is still looking for money for full-bore recording equipment, but the school is fully wired and ready if the equipment comes.

According to building Principal Alan Fritz, the studio could do professional-grade audio and video from the auditorium, the studio itself or from the music practice rooms behind the stage.

Athletics get attention as well, with a lobby on the ground floor, a large-scale weight room and a spacious locker room with a door leading directly to the football field. There are separate locker rooms flanking the gymnasium.

As for regular classrooms, they have multiple computers, and teachers get computer projection screens and Web cameras. The science labs are fully equipped, right down to machines that make distilled water.

"It's really nice to finally have labs that are set up for safety," said Holly Fritz, a biology teacher and wife of the principal. In the new school, she can set equipment up and leave it; "before we were carrying everything around by hand," she said.

Librarian Susan Boyd said she is happy with the move, too, even as she worked unpacking piles and piles of boxes of books. Her old library consisted of a couple of converted classrooms with a hall between them. "This one is much more user-friendly," she said, and the projector screen and automated systems will make teaching much easier.

There is one aspect Mrs. Boyd is not so sure about, though: The library is straight above the entrance, and has an even better view of the football field, a view that is getting more attention than the books are.

Mr. Fritz said, in fact, that the district is planning a "Garnet and Gray Club," with members getting hors d'oeuvres and a box-seat view of games through the library windows.

Such niceties will, he hopes, cause both community members and students themselves to take pride in the new building. The idea is, after all, to create an environment in which children will excel academically.

David was not so sure.

"The way it looks, it's just asking for people to mess it up," he said. "It's going to happen. It's an inevitability."

Other seniors saw things differently, however.

"I hope people respect it, and don't mess it up just to put their name on a wall," Alyssa Tabisz said. She said she thinks it will inspire students to try a little harder and expect more of themselves.

"I think the kids coming up, in seventh grade and eighth grade now, might appreciate it more than we do," Nathan Wyman said. "We're so used to the old place -- it feels like we're renting this or something."

Jenn and Katie said Mr. Fritz had laid down the law to the students, and had promised that anyone caught violating rules would be "severely embarrassed." Word was that a student had already been caught smoking, and would be arrested by the on-site police officer in the cafeteria in front of everyone there.

Katie said she was not sure how she felt about the new school at first because "I don't like change," but on the second day of classes admitted she was "starting to like it now."

Nathan, a technology fan, had no reservations. His favorite spot is the ground-floor tech lab set aside for design and drafting. "The computers and design stuff is amazing," he said.

All of which was neatly summed up by Paul Hladio, a 16-year science teacher and an Ambridge graduate.

"It's cool," he said.