Family members of Sandy Hook Elementary School stand on the field for the National Anthem for the game between the New York Giants against the Philadelphia Eagles at MetLife Stadium on Dec. 30 in East Rutherford, N.J.(Photo: Al Bello Getty Images)
MONROE, Conn. -- With a warm embrace from a neighboring town, parents
and students of Newtown's Sandy Hook Elementary School arrived here
Wednesday for an open house at a repurposed elementary school.
A
Sandy Hook Elementary School banner stretched across Chalk Hill School,
which was closed in 2010 but renovated to accommodate the students whose
studies were tragically halted on Dec. 14 when a gunman killed 20
classmates and six adults at the Sandy Hook school.
Chalk
Hill sits in the woods on a quiet road dominated by private homes.
Homeowners on roads in the area displayed welcome signs on snow-covered
front lawns. Green ribbons adorned mailboxes and fence posts. The
ribbons are the color symbolic of Sandy Hook school.
One homeowner leaned a wooden plank against a tree that says "Welcome Sandy Hook Friends Forever In Our Prayers."
When
classes start Thursday, schools Superintendent Janet Robinson said
teachers will try to make it as normal a school day as possible for the
children.
"We want to get back to teaching and learning," she
said. "We will obviously take time out from the academics for any
conversations that need to take place, and there will be a lot of
support there. All in all, we want the kids to reconnect with their
friends and classroom teachers, and I think that's going to be the
healthiest thing."
Chalk Hill School, which sits in a residential
neighborhood on the Monroe Middle School campus, is about seven miles,
or a 15-minute drive, from Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Teams of
workers prepared the former middle school with fresh paint and new
furniture and even raised bathroom floors so the smaller elementary
school students can reach the toilets. The students' desks, backpacks
and other belongings, left behind when the kids fled the shooting scene,
were taken to the new school to make them feel at home.
Today, Chalk Hill School was heavily guarded by police at the front entrance and on nearby roads.
In
Newtown, a town trying to move forward after the shooting rampage,
schools are guarded by local police. The road to Sandy Hook Elementary
School remains blocked by police as it has been since the morning of the
shooting.
Officers from nearby Bethel and Brookfield are
assisting with routine police matters, directing traffic past routine
utility work.
Most makeshift memorials for the shooting victims
have been removed from Newtown streets, including large displays that
once stood in downtown Sandy Hook. A memorial still stands at the
corner of Main and Sugar streets outside the Newtown Police Department
headquarters.
USA Today