USA TODAY International Edition
Hope, pain as Newtown, Conn., returns to school
A routine first day for town trying to feel normal again
Almost 9 months after mass shooting, town sees nearly routine first day.
NEWTOWN, CONN. With emotions mixed, families sent their children to seven public schools for the start of the new school year Tuesday — nearly nine months after 26 people were killed by a gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Heavy nighttime rains ceased before the school day began, and bus after bus filled with students arrived at the schools, which have a total enrollment of about 5,000.
Police and security personnel were stationed at four elementary schools and the intermediate, middle and high schools. Otherwise, it seemed like a routine school day with no fanfare.
Sandy Hook Elementary School remains closed, as it has been since Dec. 14, when gunman Adam Lanza killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, at their Newtown home before killing 20 children and six adults at the school. He then killed himself.
The school will be razed, and a new one — scheduled to be completed in 2016 — will be built on the same site. Until construction is completed, Sandy Hook Elementary students are being taught at a temporary school in nearby Monroe.
There were no signs, balloons or welcoming banners on the streets outside the temporary Chalk Hill School — as there were when displaced Sandy Hook Elementary students adopted the facility in January.
Sandy Hook resident John Lebinski says his daughter, Sofia, is very excited about attending fourth grade at the school. “The school is great, and everyone is very welcoming,” Lebinski says. “The kids love seeing their friends and teachers.”
Lebinski says he has no concerns about security this year, because security was “top- notch” at the temporary school last year, and the police officers there were very friendly.
“Sofia loved seeing them every day,” he says.
Newtown First Selectman Pat Llodra says many residents are excited and see the new school year “as another milestone in our progress.”
Some are “more cautious — hopeful but a bit more wary of the unknown in what this new normal means and how it will affect students and families.” For others, the new school year “is a stark reminder of loss and pain,” Llodra says.
Sandy Hook resident Monte Frank says his daughter, Sarah, is looking forward to seventh grade at Newtown Middle School. She attended Sandy Hook Elementary three years ago and was taught by Victoria Soto, a teacher killed in the shootings.
Frank, one of the town’s attorneys, says that earlier this month many Newtown parents and children were ready for school, and “things were starting to feel somewhat normal again.”
That changed, he says, on Aug. 20, when a gunman fired shots but injured no one before being arrested at an elementary school in Decatur, Ga.
“The events in Georgia last week brought back the horrible memories of Dec. 14 and fear about going back to school,” Frank says.