Sandy Hook Elementary School Opens 4 Years After Mass Shooting

It cost $50 million, and is scheduled to open next month. Visitors have to pass through gates to get to the school.

Windows and doors are bulletproof.

The new Sandy Hook School, which will feature heavy-duty windows and sophisticated video surveillance, was built with a US$50 million (S$67 million) grant from the state of CT in the small leafy town of Newtown, two and a half hours by auto north-east of New York City.

Built on the old site, the new school has a completely different layout created to make maximum use of the surrounding nature. Among its special features is a memorial garden built on the site of the two classrooms where the most students and teachers died. 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.

Past and new Sandy Hook students will return to a building with an elevated ground floor, making it hard to see inside. The property has been landscaped to ensure anyone approaching the school is visible to those inside.

Sandy Hook students have been attending school in neighboring Monroe, which renovated a previously closed elementary school for the Newtown children after the shooting.

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. 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. About 35 of them were in the building at the time, he said, attending the morning kindergarten session.

“Sandy Hook School will be a place that inspires kindness, and that our school is built upon the message of its principal, Dawn Hochsprung, who was killed on December 14: To be nice to each other, that that is all that really matters”, Llodra said. Others left through retirement or job changes, and a handful chose to transfer as part of their personal recovery process, he said. Llodra said when students return, they will see their turtle and that “keeping something they love front and center” will give the children a sense of comfort. Several victim’s family members, including family of one of the teacher’s slain, are now engaged in a lawsuit against the gun manufacturer whose weapons was used in the Sandy Hook shooting.