Sandy Hook School To Reopen After 2012 Massacre
Around 70 pupils and 60% of the staff were at the old school when the massacre occurred four years ago.
Saturday 30 July 2016 07:46, UK
A new school in the US state of Connecticut is to open on the site where 20 children and six teachers were shot dead in 2012.
Sandy Hook Elementary School replaces the one demolished after a massacre that shocked America and the world and intensified the row over gun control.
Prospective parents and the media were given a chance to look around the old school's $50m (£38m) replacement, which is on the same spot but is built to a different footprint.
It contains no memorial to those who died when 20-year-old Adam Lanza burst into the school premises and gunned down the six and seven-year-old youngsters on 14 December, 2012.
But designers say its three courtyards, study spaces designed to look like treehouses and a moat-like raingarden have been chosen with those who lost their lives in mind.
All that remains of the previous school are two large concrete slabs containing dinosaur footprints that sat outside the old building.
Officials at the school's opening said, if circumstances had been different, they would give anything to have the old building back.
Pat Llodra, the town's first selectman, said: "Let me state unequivocally that we would trade in a minute this beautiful new school for the more familiar and ancient Sandy Hook school, built in the '50s, if we could just change the past."
Some of those who had attended the old school were among those to visit its replacement, saying the opportunity was cathartic.
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.
Ms Horan said: "Once you got down to where the driveway opened up, there was a whole different feeling, at least for me.
"It was done so respectfully and so tastefully. And the kids we toured with who are going there were just so excited to be there."
Officials said the new school was designed to be attractive, environmentally friendly, conducive to learning and, above all, safe.
Visitors will need to pass through a driveway gate with a video intercom and past two police officers and a video monitoring system to get inside. Windows and doors are bulletproof.
Since the massacre, Sandy Hook pupils have been attending school in neighbouring Monroe.
Around 70 of the new school's 390 students were at the old school when the shooting occurred and about 60% of the staff members from the original Sandy Hook are still with the school.
Principal Kathy Gombos said she expects the move to the new building to be emotional.
Ms Gombos, whose predecessor Dawn Hochsprung was among those killed, 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."