The public got their first look at the newly constructed Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday, almost four years after a gunman walked through the doors and killed 20 children and six staff members, the Boston Globe reported.
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Following many meetings, officials and residents chose to accept the money the state of CT offered the school district to build a new facility, and they made a decision to demolish the old building hoping to help erase the horrific images of the loss and pain that had occurred there. Instead, the 86,000-square-foot school features a quiet area created to look like a tree house, three courtyards, a mosaic with the words “be kind”, and a moat-like rain garden.
Erardi said he still meets with affected families to discuss how they want their loved ones to be remembered at the school.
The new school, funded by a state grant, has numerous safety features.
“We’re asking everyone to give us the space we need to focus entirely on teaching and learning when we return for our first day of school”, Superintendent Joseph Erardi, the town’s top school official, said. All that remains are two large concrete slabs containing dinosaur footprints that also sat outside the old building.
“Let me say unequivocally that we would trade in a minute this handsome 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 new school will educate a little less than 400 students from prekindergarten through to the fourth grade.
The architect is Svigals + Partners, and the construction manager is Consigli Construction.
Of course, there is a lot of security built into the building, in the overall design, and in technology inside created to keep students as safe as possible.
That Sandy Hook Elementary School was torn down after the shooting took place. Of the 390 children enrolled for the upcoming year, 70 incoming fourth graders were students at the old school at the time of the shooting.
About 60 percent of the teachers from the previous Sandy Hook school are returning to the new one, Erardi said.
“There have been some tears, but I think after they spend about an hour or so here, they feel like it’s going to be an unbelievable learning space for kids”, said Gombos, whose predecessor, Principal Dawn Hochsprung, was killed that day.
The emotions surrounding the site of the former school are just still to much for them to bear.
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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.
