The town of Newtown, CT has been embroiled in a heated debate regarding the Sandy Hook Elementary School, where Adam Lanza killed 20 children and 6 adults last December. Some wanted to move on with their lives and prepare the building to reopen as a school again. Others hoped to never see it serve as a functioning building again and wanted the place torn down. Who’s right?
The Sandy Hook Task Force voted unanimously last Friday to recommend to the Newtown Board of Education to demolish the existing school and build a new one in its place. They want the building torn down in the hopes of erasing some of the emotional scars left behind from the December shooting massacre.
But several residents and former graduates of the school petitioned to see the building salvaged. Many argued that an entire park is not torn down if a crime is committed in it, so why should the school be?
Since the massacre, Sandy Hook students have been attending Chalk Hill Middle School in the nearby town of Monroe. A portion of the building was transformed to resemble an elementary school, and security was increased by adding new locks and surveillance cameras.
Sandy Hook’s task force originally considered other alternatives to demolishing the building, including renovating it or building a new school on a different site. But the 26 member task force apparently felt tearing down the building and starting from scratch on the same site was in the best interest of the community.
Is it a waste of taxpayer dollars to demolish a structurally sound building for emotional reasons, or are the scars of the shooting massacre too great for this building to ever function as a school or anything else again?
