A new school in the U.S. state of CT is to open on the site where 20 children and six teachers were shot dead in 2012.
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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 $50 million, 86,800-square-foot building opens next month.
The school was built with a gated driveway, state-of-the art video monitoring and bulletproof windows and doors. Its ground floor is elevated, making it harder to see inside classrooms from the outside.
The old school was demolished in the year following the massacre; the footprint of that school is now a parking lot. Construction on the school began in 2014 and more than 500 students from pre-K through fourth grade are expected to attend.
It contains no memorial to those who died when 20-year-old Adam Lanza burst into the school premises and gunned down the six and seven-year-old youngsters on 14 December, 2012.
NEWTOWN Attached to a wall near one of the entrances at the new Sandy Hook Elementary School is a large, mostly green glass mural inscribed with a message most children will understand: Be kind.
The school has a nature theme and state-of-the-art security.
Newtown First Selectman Pat Llodra says Shelley has been with Sandy Hook Elementary for over a decade. It has been landscaped to ensure anyone approaching the school is visible to those inside and can enter via one of three pedestrian bridges that cross the landscaping.
“Our goal was to create a place of community and learning, a place that would honor those we lost and allow those who were left behind the chance to move forward”, Llodra said.
Sandy Hook officials were faced with the decision to renovate the school or level it and start over.
“Security concerns were carefully analyzed and were seamlessly integrated into the architecture, providing a safe learning environment while supporting the educational mission of the school”, the district says on a web site that provides details about the new school. About 35 of them were in the building at the time, he said, attending the morning kindergarten session.
Because of retirements and transfers, only about half the staff members from the original Sandy Hook are still with the school, he said.
NEWTOWN, Conn. – When the children of Newtown, Connecticut, report to the new Sandy Hook Elementary School next month, they will enter a building carefully created to protect them from the unthinkable.
The school will open quietly in September after the summer holidays, although local media were taken on a guided tour on Friday.
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Remington wants many company records requested by the families’ lawyers sealed from public view, saying disclosing them would hurt the company financially and benefit competitors.
