wenda alford: Sandy Hook children, parents tour their new school

Friday, January 4, 2013

Sandy Hook children, parents tour their new school

Carlo Allegri / Reuters

People walk past a makeshift memorial in Sandy Hook after the Dec. 14, 2012 shooting tragedy , in Newtown, Connecticut, on Dec. 28, 2012.

By Tracy Connor, NBC News

Students from Sandy Hook Elementary will go back to class Thursday in a borrowed building that one police official described as ?the safest school in America.?

They will enter classrooms that have been furnished to look like the ones they left last month as Adam Lanza carried out his massacre.

Desks and even abandoned backpacks and coats have been brought from Sandy Hook in Newtown, Conn., to the new school in Monroe, seven miles away.

Pupils and parents had a chance to tour the building ? an unused former middle school ? on Wednesday after Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy met with teachers.

When they return at 9 a.m. Thursday, they will find counselors and extra police on hand.

?It feels extremely secure there,? Newtown School Superintendent Janet Robinson told reporters.

Police declined to say what security measures were in place, but Monroe Lt. Keith White said parents don?t have to worry.

?Right now, it has to be the safest school in America,? he said.

David Connors, 40, who has 8-year-old triplets, said he knows that sending his kids back to school will be difficult ? but crucial.

?The past three weeks have been just crazy,? he?told NBC Connecticut.? ?Getting back to that sense of figuring out what the new normal is going to look like, I think, is important. Everyone is waiting for that to happen.?

His children, he said, are ready for the transition.

?They want to see their teacher. They want to see their classes. They want to get back into a routine,? he said.

The 500 students have not been in school since Adam Lanza blasted his way into Sandy Hook on Dec. 14 and killed 20 children, six staffers and himself. He had earlier killed his mother.

Teachers from Newtown and Monroe spent their holiday break readying the new building for the children, and Robinson said it looks ?cheerful and happy? and is decorated with paper snowflakes sent in from around the world.

She said the first day back will be as ordinary as possible, and the school will wait some time to honor teachers for their bravery during Lanza?s killing spree, which was largely confined to two first-grade classrooms.

"There's certainly going to be children that are scared,? Thalia Andernen, a counselor with The Center of Hope, a nonprofit family support center,?told NBC New York.

?They're going to be frightened and feel very insecure about going back, but a lot of them are going to be resilient.?