In many ways, Friday’s public unveiling of the new, $50-million Sandy Hook Elementary School is the culmination of a balancing act.
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Sandy Hook Elementary School will reopen for a new school year on August 29, almost four years after 20 first-graders and six educators were killed.
“But, let me state unequivocally that we would trade in a minute this lovely new school for the more familiar and ancient Sandy Hook school, built in the ’50s, if we could just change the past”, said Pat Llodra, the town’s first selectman.
Officials say there are about 70 students who were at the school in 2012 who will be attending the new school.
“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 structure sits farther back on the property and the remaining concrete slabs – complete with their original dinosaur footprints – are in the new parking lot.
Local officials hope allowing people to take a look this week will make for a “quiet, respectful, and appropriate opening” on August 29, Superintendent Joseph Erardi said.
The 86,000-square-foot school will house 464 students in pre-K to fourth grade and includes 20 K-to-fourth-grade classrooms. “It was done so respectfully and so tastefully”.
“From the very first day, we were aware of just how important it was to build the best possible building for the students and the Newtown community”.
“Our job was to listen”, said Julia McFadden, associate principal of Svigals + Partners, lead architects on the project.
According to the Chicago Tribune, the new design of the elementary school was created to do more than be a place of education, and the facility will also be an attractive, environmentally friendly setting.
Visitors will need to pass through a driveway gate, across a moat-like rain garden, past two police officers and a video monitoring system to get inside. All the doors and windows are bulletproof.
The only sense of familiarity some of the returning students will have is Shelley the turtle, who’s waiting for school to start in her brand new aquarium.
The district will provide those students and staff with special resources to help cope with the return, Erardi said.
Sandy Hook Principal Kathy Gombos said she expects the transition to be hard emotionally.
“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 Ms. Gombos.
Erardi said school administrators will continue meeting with families of the victims confidentially about a permanent memorial in the town. Those entering the school can do so by one of three pedestrian bridges which cross over water, and the school grounds are now designed in a way to be more in tune with nature, having treehouses and courtyards.
Llodra said that despite the new school’s “birth” from tragedy, the school will be a place of love, laughter and learning.
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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.
