It isn’t enough to say that the commons facility at Oak Harbor High School is big.

For an accurate sense of how large the building is, one must walk through the roomy classrooms, two-tiered auditorium and new kitchen that make up the structure.

The roughly $15 million Student Union Building opened its doors last week, and students and faculty are still feeling their way around. For many, the size is the biggest adjustment.

“The difference between the old and the new is obvious, and the major change is space,” food service director Ken Harrison said.

In the former Parker Hall, about 300 students would converge on the lunch counter at the same time. They stood in two lines that stretched out of the room and well down the hall to wait to be served. There were two or three entrees when they reached the front, usually a pizza, burger or special of the day.

In the “new Parker Hall,” all of that changes.

There are five serving lines now and, in addition to pizzas and burgers, there’s a line for Pacific Rim or Asian cuisine, and a serve-yourself sandwich and salad line.

With the new cooking equipment, the meals are healthier and more diverse. For example, french fries are no longer fried, they’re baked.

Before the switch, fewer than half of the students took advantage of the food service at the high school.

“Some kids just don’t want to stand in a long line,” Harrison said.

In its first week of operation, the kitchen served, on average, about 632 lunches a day, or about 100 more than previously served.

And the kitchen is nearly five times larger than before.

Band teacher Bruce Lantz is also adjusting to ample work space on the second floor, where the school has centered its music department.

Little had ever changed in Lantz’s former classroom since he moved into the Oak Harbor School District in 1984. And for the first time in his teaching career, Lantz has a window.

“It looks like what I would call a department package,” he said of the building.

The area includes a music library, large-size music storage, a long hallway of practice rooms and the new auditorium is directly below.

Students sometimes complained the previous classroom was “old and small,” Lantz said.

“I think it will give kids more pride in the program.”

At Monday’s school board meeting, junior Jordan Otruba told the crowd about the students’ take on the building.

“The first day, all you heard was, ‘This is so cool,’” he said.