Newtown weighs fate of school
2013-01-14 13:59
Newtown - Talk about Sandy Hook Elementary School is turning from last
month's massacre to the future, with differing opinions on whether students and
staff should ever return to the building where a gunman killed 20 students and
six educators.
Some Newtown residents say the school
should be demolished and a memorial built on the property in honour of those
killed on 14 December.
Others believe the school should be renovated and the areas where the
killings occurred removed. That's what happened at Columbine High School in
Littleton, Colorado, after the 1999 mass shooting there.
Those appear to be the two prevailing
proposals as the community begins discussing the school's fate.
A public meeting on the building's future drew about 200 people to Newtown
High School on Sunday afternoon, with another meeting set for Friday. Town
officials also are planning private meetings with the victims' families to get
their input.
Mixed opinions
Sunday's meeting was an emotional
gathering with many speaking in favour of keeping the school.
Although opinions were mixed, most agreed that the Sandy Hook children and
teachers should stay together. They've been moved to a school building about 11km
away in a neighbouring town that has been renamed Sandy Hook Elementary School.
"I have two children who had
everything taken from them," said Audrey Bart, who has two children at
Sandy Hook who weren't injured in the shooting. "The Sandy Hook Elementary
School is their school. It is not the world's school. It is not Newtown's school.
We cannot pretend it never happened, but I am not prepared to ask my children
to run and hide. You can't take away their school."
But fellow Sandy Hook parent Stephanie
Carson said she couldn't imagine ever sending her son back to the building.
"I know there are children who were
there who want to go back," Carson said. "But the reality is, I've
been to the new school where the kids are now, and we have to be so careful
just walking through the halls. They are still so scared."
Mergim Bajraliu, a senior at Newtown High School, attended Sandy Hook, and
his sister is a fourth-grader there. He said the school should stay as it is,
and a memorial for the victims should be built there.
"We have our best childhood memories
at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and I don't believe that one psychopath - who
I refuse to name - should get away with taking away any more than he did on 14
December," he said.
Police said Adam Lanza, 20, killed his
mother at the home they shared in Newtown before opening fire with a
semiautomatic rifle at the school and killing himself as police arrived.
Dilemma
Residents of towns where mass shootings occurred have grappled with the same
dilemma. Some have renovated, some have demolished.
Columbine High School, where two student
gunmen killed 12 schoolmates and a teacher, reopened several months afterward.
Crews removed the library, where most of the victims died, and replaced it with
an atrium.
On an island in Norway where 69 people -
more than half of them teenagers attending summer camp - were killed by a gunman
in 2011, extensive remodelling is planned. The main building, a cafeteria where
13 of the victims died, will be torn down.
Virginia Tech converted a classroom
building where a student gunman killed 30 people in 2007 into a peace studies
and violence prevention centre.
An Amish community in Pennsylvania tore
down the West Nickel Mines Amish School and built a new school a few hundred meters
away after a gunman killed five girls there in 2006.
Newtown First Selectwoman E Patricia
Llodra said that in addition to the community meetings, the town is planning
private gatherings with the victims' families to talk about the school's future.
She said the aim is to finalise a plan by March.
"I think we have to start that
conversation now," Llodra said. "It will take many, many months to do
any kind of school project. We have very big decisions ahead of us. The goal is
to bring our students home as soon as we can."
- AP
