Almost four years after a deadly massacre where a lone gunman killed 27, including 20 students, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Ct., a rebuilt school is set to repoen next month.
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“Let me say unequivocally that we would trade in a minute this lovely new school for the more familiar and aged Sandy Hook school built in the ’50s if we could just change the past”, Llodra said.
The 86,800-square-foot school will house students in pre-kindergarten to fourth grade. The school has a gated driveway, video monitoring and two police officers stationed on the premises. Its ground floor is elevated, making it harder to see inside classrooms from the outside.
The school was built on the same property but not in the old footprint.
“Our role now, as adults and leaders, is to bring this new, lovely place into its rightful status as the SHS of the present and future”, said Newtown First Selectman Pat Llodra. Reuters Officials unveiled the new school on Friday.
Surviving students have been attending school in the neighboring town of Monroe since 2012.
“It’s always emotional. You always want to remember those who just lost their lives, and I think it’s a huge tribute to what Sandy Hook was and what we intend to be in the future, and that’s just a warm, smart environment”, said Gombos.
Members of the media tour the newly constructed Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, U.S. July 29, 2016.
During a media access day for the new school Friday, Newtown First Selectman Patricia Llodra welcomed everyone to the state-of-the-art facility.
The new building adopted a nature-based theme to reflect Newtown’s landscape. About 70 of the new fourth-graders were students at the old Sandy Hook at the time of the shooting. The school district decided that a memorial would not be appropriate at the school, and are looking to erect a memorial elsewhere in Newtown.
A playground bench is colorfully decorated at the new Sandy Hook Elementary School, Friday, July 29, 2016, in Newtown, Conn.
The 59 first-graders who survived the Sandy Hook Massacre will not be returning to the new school as they and the rest of their class, 79 students total, are moving up to the fifth-grade at Reed Intermediate School. About 35 of them were in the building at the time, but none witnessed the shootings, he said.
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Llodra says the goal was to “create a space at the highest and best of levels of a marriage between art and architecture that honored every single victim, every family, every parent, every student”. But he said those conversations remain confidential.
