When the public gets its first glimpse Friday of the school built to replace the one where 20 first-graders and six educators were massacred, they’ll see a building designed to be attractive, environmentally friendly, conducive to learning, and above all, safe.
The old Sandy Hook Elementary School was torn down after the gunman’s rampage in December 2012. The new $50 million, 86,000-square-foot school was built on the same property but not in the old footprint, and is scheduled to open next month. A media tour will precede a public open house on Friday.
Local officials hope that allowing everyone a look at the school this week will give students a “quiet, respectful, and appropriate opening as teachers and students return to the new school year,” on Aug. 29, Superintendent Joseph Erardi said.
The new school, funded by a state grant, has safety features such as impact-resistant windows and state-of-the-art video monitoring. Its ground floor is elevated, making it harder to see inside classrooms from the outside. 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.
It has been built to invoke nature, with treehouses and courtyards.
The driveway and parking lots also have been changed, to minimize the emotional impact on students and educators seeing the property for the first time since the shooting.
“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,” First Selectman Pat Llodra said in a statement.
Sandy Hook students have been attending school in neighboring Monroe, which renovated a previously closed elementary school for the Newtown children after the shooting. The new school will serve students from pre-kindergarten through fourth grade.
There will be about 390 students enrolled this fall, and 70 of those, all now fourth-graders, were students at the old school when the shooting occurred, Erardi said. Only about 30 of them were in the building at the time, he said, attending the morning kindergarten session.
None of them witnessed the shootings, which were heard throughout the school, prompting students to hide where they could in their classrooms until the building was cleared by police. The shooting occurred before the afternoon 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.
The district will provide those students and staff with special resources to help cope with the return, Erardi said.
A three-year, $7.1 million grant to fund added mental health professionals has expired. But grants from charities will cover those costs, he said.
It will not have a prominent memorial to the Sandy Hook victims, and Erardi declined to say whether they will be remembered in some other way.
“I’m going to pass on answering that,” he said, “because it involves the conversations I’ve had with the impacted families and those will always remain confidential.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.Â
What Massacre? You mean the “emergency drill” with the paid actors? The real ambulances that were then parked in so they couldn’t leave? The scene with no bodies, laughing parents talking about their dead kids and ZERO deaths reported in the official, FBI statistics? If anyone is clueless still, check-out the Robbie Parker hoax videos on Youtube and go from there! Sorry MSM, we’re not buying the BS today!
THANK YOU A VOICE OF REASON did you know hundreds of homes in that town were paid off in full on Dec 25…..GUESS THOSE TREASONOUS PEOPLE PLAYED THE GAME
You’re a f****** moron
And you Bruce are a TROLL.
Beware all – BRUCE is a Troll.
thank you Dick ..a voice of reason…WONDER HOW MANY PEOPLE KNOW THAT HUNDREDS OF PEOPLES HOME WERE PAID OFF IN FULL ON DEC 25 THAT SAME YEAR
Hey let’s go out on YouTube and find the truth it’s always out there
Yeah let’s go on YouTube and find the truth it’s always out there
Bruce, you good TROLL that you are, the TRUTH is on YouTube. Google Earth showed the school not being an active school at the time of this event. So there.
All signs of a scheduled drill were there. Including the drill date on FEMA calendar. The signs “Sign in here”, porta-potties and hundreds of water bottles that are mandatory for scheduled drills.
People smirking, and openly smiling, including police, well visible on “SandyHook , bloopers and outakes.” Children on camera talking about hearing something liking a ‘janitor banging in the closet”. American children familiar with gun shots on TV can tell the difference between gun shots, and other noise.
The school was closed, as there were no existing bills for several years – water, sewer, etc. was not being used. The school was closed long before the sh…oting drill, as it was full of asbestos. No parents were ALLOWED to see their dead children ? What do you mean, since when the government can ORDER parents not to say goodbye to their dead children. There were no dead children.
A year prior to this event the Connnecticut legislature decided to have a unique law – autopsies of children are not to be subject to FOIA. Hm, as the ONLY state in the Union ?
Thank you Voice of Reason for saying what majority of Americans seem to know today, they just don’t get on the soapbox about it. Same with 9/11, and other events.
Curious. No comments here. Must be because it wasn’t a Muslim that did it.
Tragedy is a part of life. People die from tragic deaths around our nation every day. Most don’t make the news. We all have to learn how to cope. The people in Newtown need to learn the same thing.
Hopefully school and town officials will focus on the future rather than the past. The current students don’t need to be turned into victims by adults who want to try to make this a memorial to the shooting victims. They have most of their life ahead of them. The school should focus on helping them learn the skills that will allow them to reach their full potential. The new school providing a quality education would be the best way to memorialize all those who were killed in the old building.
The same thing could be said for terrorist attacks I guess
Yeah I guess we could say the same about terrorist attacks
they destroyed the school–no bullet holes in the walls–no blood on the floors–from the crew that wrecked it
Ken, also there was a security camera right on the wall in the entry.
And curiously there was no footage from that morning to be made available to the media ?
There were people who decided to drive from NYC to Newton, it is about an hour, after the shooting.
They did some filming around, entered local businesses to see how the community coped with ‘the tragedy”.
And curiously – it was business as usual…all business folks smile, asked how is everything the business owners said:”What a nice day”. Very curious indeed that ALL businesses were just fine, and NONE of them said “Oh, how can we cope with this horrible tragedy on this day..” None. Why ? Looks as if there was NO tragedy.
It would make sense, since the fundraising page of United way was dated 3 days prior to, and Randy Parker’s (dead of one of the allegedly dead girls) was dated the morning prior to the shooting event. Fundraising for dead Emily Parker, dated PRIOR to that morning shooting.
May I ask are you guys actually saying there was “NO” actual shooting ? I don’t live in the US but how could people fake a mass shooting?