Sandy Hook school to reopen after shooting

The new school in Newtown, Connecticut, is ready for students, nearly four years after 20 students and six educators were massacred at its now-demolished predecessor, which stood at the same site, reports the New York Times.

These features include impact resistant windows and state of the art video monitoring.

The school’s ground floor is elevated, making it hard to see inside classrooms from the outside.

It is on the site of the old school, but has an entirely different footprint.

Melisa Horan went with her sixth-grade age son who is now too old for the prekindergarten-to-fourth-grade school but wanted to see what the new building looked like. The property has been landscaped to ensure anyone approaching the school is visible to those inside. Erardi requested privacy during the school’s first day on August 29.

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. She said that while it’s nice that students can return to their Newtown school, it’s a sad day because people cannot help but think of all of those that were lost in 2012.

The news media was given an early look Friday at the newly constructed Sandy Hook Elementary School, WTNH-TV reports. About 35 of them were in the building at the time, he said, attending the morning kindergarten session.

“The transition to the new school needs to be as seamless as possible for the children”, Superintendent Joseph Erardi said in a statement, according to the Courant.

But architects – who consulted the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a number of state and local agencies and the community – made sure little resembles the old building. After the shooting incident, the students were moved to a temporary location in nearby Monroe, which was an unused school building.

A three-year, $7.1 million grant to fund added mental health professionals has expired.

Erardi said school administrators will continue meeting with families of the victims confidentially about a permanent memorial in the town.

Because of retirements and transfers, only about half the staff members from the original Sandy Hook are still with the school, he said. But he said those conversations remain confidential. Reuters Officials unveiled the new school on Friday.