The awful grief that gripped the nation following the massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in late 2012 is still with us, but almost three-and-a-half-years after the tragedy, parents and students will get their first glimpse of the new school building on Friday. The new structure sits farther back on the property and the remaining concrete slabs – complete with their original dinosaur footprints – are in the new parking lot. In its place rose a new school, built on the same grounds, but different enough that it wouldn’t serve as a reminder of the rampage, and created to be much safer.
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“That is what a school should be”, said Moran, “the excitement of learning and seeing all the new stuff”.
In just a few weeks, the new Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown will welcome students for the very first time.
Poignantly, the design also includes a tile mural of ducks, recalling the ducks that used to gather at the old school, along with the words, “Be kind”.
“There are various elements of the building that are hard and beyond what would have been and what we would have done 10 years ago”, says Brotman.
The school’s design was the result of dozens of meetings among Sandy Hook educators, families, community members, architects and builders.
The school’s superintendent says those students are still recovering in their own ways and school officials will continue to help them moving forward. It was funded by a state grant.
About 60 percent of the teachers from the previous Sandy Hook school are returning to the new one, Erardi said. The windows are impact resistant and there is a state-of-the art camera system ministering the halls at all times.
“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. Among its special features is a memorial garden built on the site of the two classrooms where the most students and teachers died. This fall, the new building will be open for students once again.
The center courtyard of the newly constructed Sandy Hook Elementary School, built to replace the building torn down after a gunman shot dead 20 young children and six educators in a 2012 massacre, is pictured in Newtown, Connecticut, U.S. July 29, 2016.
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“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.
