Newtown First Selectman Pat Llodra said during a press conference in the new building that she expects students to be upset and anxious in the new school, but also excited.
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Sandy Hook Elementary School will reopen for a new school year on August 29, almost four years after 20 first-graders and six educators were killed.
Those features include a gated entrance, impact-resistant windows, an elevated ground floor, video monitoring, locks at entrances and card readers. The new school will educate a little less than 400 students from prekindergarten through to the fourth grade.
In the years since the massacre, Sandy Hook students have been attending school in neighboring Monroe, which renovated a previously closed elementary school after the shooting.
“The 40 percent not returning does not indicate, in any margin, those unable or unwilling”, Erardi said, adding that “We probably had a handful of staff members, who due to their own personal recovery and rebuild, have chosen to be in a different part of our district”.
The school was designed, officials said, to be attractive, environmentally friendly, conducive to learning and, above all, safe.
There will be about 390 students enrolled this fall, and 70 of those, all now fourth-graders, were students at the old school when the shooting occurred, Erardi said. About 35 of them were in the building at the time, he said, attending the morning kindergarten session.
Officials unveiled the new Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday, giving reporters a preview in the hope that students can return to school in September without the glare of media scrutiny.
“Sandy Hook School will be a place that inspires kindness, and that our school is built upon the message of its principal, Dawn Hochsprung, who was killed on December 14: To be nice to each other, that that is all that really matters”, Llodra said.
Principal Dr. Kathy Gombos (C) addresses the media during the unveiling of the newly constructed Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, U.S. July 29, 2016. She said the building’s configuration means people walking inside the school are always “interacting” with the landscape.
“There have been some tears, but I think after they spend about an hour or so here, they feel like it’s going to be an unbelievable learning space for kids”, said Ms. Gombos.
The new Sandy Hook Elementary School will not have a formal memorial to the Sandy Hook victims, and officials declined to answer if there would be another way to honor the lives taken, stating that conversations with the families impacted will guide the decision.
There will be a more public memorial elsewhere in town.
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Mixed emotions accompanied the opening, though, with the New York Times reporting that one special education aide at Reed Intermediate School, Lisabeth Kuroski, said the reopening of the school was bittersweet.
