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A Desire for Normalcy as Sandy Hook Students Return to Class The Children Of a Tragedy Are Returned To School Life
(about 5 hours later)
MONROE, Conn. — The children’s desks are the same. The pictures and drawings completed weeks ago are hanging on the walls. And the students’ backpacks — left behind as they fled in terror — are once again tucked into classroom closets. MONROE, Conn. — On the first day back, Sean Murray said, his 9-year-old son, Brendan, was eager to return to school and see his friends, but he was nervous at the same time.
As students from Sandy Hook Elementary School returned on Thursday for their first day of class since 20 first graders and 6 faculty members were shot dead at their school in Newtown, Conn., every effort was made to create a familiar welcoming environment. “Brendan had two kids in his class whose siblings were killed,” Mr. Murray said. “He’s been getting counseling outside of school, and he might be getting more therapy in school. He’s a trooper, and he’s marching along, but you know there are underlying effects.”
But, it was not the same school. The Sandy Hook that the children had attended is closed and likely to remain closed for some time. For Brendan, for his mother, Anne, an occupational therapist at Sandy Hook Elementary who lost three of her closest friends, and for everyone else, the road back began on Thursday at what had once been a middle school. It was seven miles away from the school where 20 children and 6 faculty members were killed by a gunman on Dec. 14.
Instead, classes were held some seven miles away, at the former Chalk Hill School in Monroe, which was transformed over the holidays to a “very cheerful and nurturing” elementary school, the Newtown schools superintendent, Janet Robinson, said. Mr. Murray said the district had done a “remarkable job” of recreating the old school in a new setting and creating a nurturing environment that included therapy dogs there to greet returning children. Still, he said, it will be tough.
School officials said that by bringing the furniture, artwork and backpacks from the old school to the new one, they were trying to make the transition as seamless as possible. “I was kind of happy, but I sort of felt like I was going to throw up,” he said, after dropping off his son and his wife, who is on medical leave but wanted to be with the children and her colleagues on the first day back. “We’re all trying to move on, but there’s a nervous sickness. I’m not sure that’ll ever go away.”
Beyond the aesthetics, workers also had to change a middle school to an elementary school. That meant changes large and small, like raising bathroom floors to accommodate smaller children and lowering paper towel dispensers within reach of smaller arms. “At one point there were 80 people in the building, cleaning up the building,” Dr. Robinson said Wednesday. A larger staff has been assigned to the school, she said, including mental health professionals. The goal had been to replicate the students’ surroundings and experiences before Dec. 14, and that was how the day unfolded. Officials said that attendance was good and that most students took the bus to school.
And for all the effort made to make the school feel like home, the one thing that was missing and could not be replaced were the people who were lost. “A lot of them were happy to see their friends they hadn’t seen in a while,” Lt. Keith White of the Monroe Police Department said at a news conference on Thursday afternoon. “They were excited about the new school.”
Like Dawn Hochsprung, the principal who was killed while trying to stop the gunman, Adam Lanza, after he blasted his way in on Dec. 14. Sandy Hook’s former principal, Donna Page, came out of retirement to run the school. The children arrived after a bus trip, largely through rolling exurban terrain full of handmade welcome signs. Everything inside had been painstakingly arranged to resemble the school and the classrooms they had left behind. The children’s desks were the same. The pictures and drawings completed weeks ago were hanging on the walls. The students’ backpacks — left behind as they fled — were once again tucked into classroom closets. Beyond the aesthetics, changing a middle school into an elementary school meant changes large and small, like raising bathroom floors to accommodate smaller children and lowering paper towel dispensers.
There are also reminders of just how much the tragedy affected people outside this small New England community, including homemade snowflakes sent in from well-wishers looking for a way to express their solidarity. “At one point there were 80 people in the building, cleaning up the building,” Janet Robinson, superintendent of schools in Newtown, said on Wednesday. More staff members have been assigned to the school, she said, including security and mental health professionals.
“There are snowflakes from around the world there,” Dr. Robinson said. Sarah Caron made her son, William, 7, his favorite breakfast — blueberry white-chocolate pancakes — as much, perhaps, for her peace of mind as for his, before he boarded the bus Thursday.
Even local residents who did not have a child in the school on Thursday felt the weight of the moment. At the Demitasse Café in Sandy Hook, where white paper hearts from around the country hung in the windows, Chris Maurer said that as he was driving Thursday morning, he noticed one or two bus stops where children would normally be waiting to be picked up, but were empty. “It’s going to be a new normal,” she said. She also has a 5-year-old in kindergarten, who attends the afternoon session. “It can’t be the same, but hopefully everything will get a little bit easier every day.”
“You think you’re O.K., and then something happens and it all comes back,” said Mr. Maurer, whose five children attended Sandy Hook Elementary. Parents, who were allowed to walk through the school on Wednesday and spend the day there on Thursday, expressed satisfaction with the building, staff members and the preparations made to allow the children to come back to nurturing surroundings.
Beth Umiacke, another diner, said, “Today is going to be a very hard day for everybody.” There was particular praise for Donna Page, Sandy Hook’s former principal, who came out of retirement to replace Dawn Hochsprung, the principal who was killed while trying to stop the gunman, Adam Lanza.
On Wednesday, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut toured the refurbished school, which had been closed because of declining enrollment. Students and parents were also invited to see the building and their teachers Wednesday before a normal schedule was resumed on Thursday. John Woodall, a psychiatrist who lives in Newtown and has worked on trauma response programs after Sept. 11 and Hurricane Katrina, praised the school’s and the community’s response to the tragedy. The memorials in Sandy Hook are gone, replaced by signs reading, “We are Sandy Hook. We Choose Love.” The banner in front of Town Hall reads: “Together We Birth a Culture of Peace.”
“They have been so excited to see their teachers,” Dr. Robinson said. “It’s almost as if this horrible event stripped people of the artifice that usually keeps people separate from each other,” he said. “The respect and kindness among people has been remarkable. You might think the words ‘Newtown student,’ like ‘Columbine student,’ would bring to mind kids who are traumatized, psychological casualties. But we’re determined to have ‘Newtown student’ mean something different — to become a role model for the best of humanity — for showing that light can come out of darkness.”
While the goal was to help the children resume as normal a routine as possible, the classrooms in the new school were not set up to exactly mimic those in the old building.

Robert Davey and Elizabeth Maker contributed reporting from Connecticut, and Mark Santora from New York.

“Teachers were creative in setting up the rooms, and some of them are very different,” Dr. Robinson said.
Around town, as buses picked up children from familiar stops, there were signs that for all the desire for normalcy, there was still some anxiety. Two police cars were parked at the local high school as stepped-up patrols made the rounds at other schools.
Given all the attention on the new Sandy Hook Elementary School, the authorities said there would be increased security to ensure that there were no problems.
“I think right now it has to be the safest school in America,” Lt. Keith White of the Monroe police said.

Peter Applebome reported from Monroe, Conn., and Marc Santora from New York.