The new school, like the old, will serve students from prekindergarten through fourth grade.
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Local officials hope allowing people to take a look at the school this week will give students a “quiet, respectful, and appropriate opening as teachers and students return to the new school year” on August 29, Superintendent Joseph Erardi said.
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. According to Time, the school is completely redesigned and contains no obvious memorials to the 26 people who died inside the old school in 2012.
Prospective parents and the media were given a chance to look around the old school’s $US50m replacement, which is on the same spot but is built to a different footprint.
The 86,800-square-foot facility was built on the site of the old school, which was torn down after the December 14, 2012, shooting attack.
Erardi says the new school has state-of-the art security measures and was designed using input from the local community.
Half of the school’s staff was there for the shootings, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza ran through the building with a Bushmaster XM15 assault rifle and killed 20 children ages 6 and 7 years old, as well as six school staff members.
“From the very first day, we were aware of just how important it was to build the best possible building for the students and the Newtown community”.
Windows and doors are bulletproof.
About 35 returning students were in kindergarten at the time of the shooting and are now returning as fourth graders. Other security and safety plans in the school are confidential, Erardi said. She said that while it’s nice that students can return to their Newtown school, it’s a sad day because people cannot help but think of all of those that were lost in 2012.
The Sandy Hook massacre prompted President Barack Obama to launch an unsuccessful drive to tighten USA gun laws, after which he assailed the Republican-controlled Congress for blocking reforms that would have toughened background checks on gun buyers. Principal Kathy Gombos said she expects the move to the new building to be emotional.
Erardi said school administrators will continue meeting with families of the victims confidentially about a permanent memorial in the town. The school will be more about the future than the past.
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A sign, right, reads, “Sandy Hook Elementary 12.14.12 We’ll Always Remember”, in a classroom of the new Sandy Hook Elementary School, Friday, July 29, 2016, in Newtown, Conn.
