The school built to replace the original building where 20 first-graders and six educators were killed is set to open to the media Friday in Newton, Connecticut.
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In many ways, Friday’s public unveiling of the new, $50-million Sandy Hook Elementary School is the culmination of a balancing act.
The thought of those 26 people remains – through new safety features, like a gate at the front of the school and bulletproof glass windows. The ground floor is elevated in an effort to make it harder to see inside of the classrooms from outside the building, and the new Sandy Hook Elementary School grounds has been landscaped to ensure that anyone who is approaching the school is clearly visible to all persons inside.
“They told us about this family of ducks that used to reside in the old courtyard of the former school and they were really concerned that we could attract the ducks back hopefully to the new school”, said McFadden.
Sandy Hook students have been attending school in neighboring Monroe, which renovated a previously closed elementary school for the Newtown children after the shooting.
None of them witnessed the shootings, which were heard throughout the school, prompting students to hide where they could in their classrooms until the building was cleared by police. The new school will educate a little less than 400 students from prekindergarten through to the fourth grade. For the first time in four years, Sandy Hook Elementary School is opening it’s doors to students and allowing them to create new memories – happier memories, for themselves.
“Let me state, unequivocally that we would trade, in a minute, this attractive new school for the more familiar and aged Sandy Hook School built in the 50s, if we could just change the past”, Llodra said. This fall, the new building will be open for students once again.
“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. The school district decided that a memorial would not be appropriate at the school, and are looking to erect a memorial elsewhere in Newtown.
The school also integrates many naturalistic features, part of the design team’s efforts to mitigate any fear or anxieties that may arise among teachers and students.
The public will get its first glimpse of the CT school built to replace the one where 20 first-graders and six educators were massacred.
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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.
