Newtown panel: Tear down Sandy Hook Elementary, rebuild on property
Updated 11:02 PM ET
NEWTOWN, Conn. A task force of elected officials in Newtown on Friday recommended tearing down Sandy Hook Elementary School, where 20 first-graders and six educators were killed in December, and rebuilding on the same site.
The group of 28 town elected officials voted unanimously in favor of a plan that would construct a new building in the same location as the existing school. The proposal now goes to the local school board and then before voters as a referendum.
Parent Daniel Krauss, whose daughter is a second-grader, said he was pleased by the panel's recommendation.
"It's been a place for learning, for kids to grow up and it's going to go back to that," he said.
The panel had previously narrowed a list of choices to renovating or rebuilding on the school site or building a new school on property down the street. A study found building a new school on the existing site would cost $57 million.
The 430 surviving students are attending a renovated school renamed Sandy Hook Elementary School in the neighboring town of Monroe.
If all goes well, officials said construction could begin in the spring and the new building could reopen in January 2016.
"I like the idea of a new school coming in and a fresh start," Doug Harrison of Newtown said, as reported by CBS affiliate WFSB Friday. "I can't imagine not going in with a fresh start at this point. There's been enough support," "I know there's enough corporate support out there, big companies like GE that would be willing to put money behind it, so let's take advantage of the public support and go do it."
Sandy Hook Elementary School hasn't housed students since the killings. Some town residents said the school should be torn down because they couldn't imagine sending children back there. Others favored renovating the school, with some saying that tearing it down would be a victory for evil.
Laura Roche, a member of the Sandy Hook School Task Force, said it's been "very emotional and very hard" to come to a decision about the school's future. But she was pleased by the unanimous vote -- a signal the panel was united.
"We came together as 28 and I hope we can come together as a community to rebuild the spirit of our community and build the school together," she said.
Residents of towns where other mass school shootings occurred have grappled with the same dilemma. Some have renovated, some have demolished.
Columbine High School in Colorado, where two student gunmen killed 12 schoolmates and a teacher in 1999, reopened several months afterward. Crews removed the library, where most of the victims died, and replaced it with an atrium.
Virginia Tech converted a classroom building where a student gunman killed 30 people in 2007 into a peace studies and violence prevention center. And an Amish community in Pennsylvania tore down the West Nickel Mines Amish School and built a new school a few hundred yards away after a gunman killed five girls there in 2006.
On the morning of Dec. 14, gunman Adam Lanza, who had killed his mother at their Newtown home, went to Sandy Hook Elementary School and opened fire with an assault rifle, killing the 20 children and the six adults. He killed himself as police arrived at the school.
The school shooting, one of the deadliest in U.S. history, has spurred national debate about gun control and Second Amendment rights.
Police have not disclosed possible motives for the Newtown killings. Law enforcement officials have said Lanza showed an interest in other mass killings and played violent video games.
On Monday, the six educators who were killed in the shooting -- Dawn Hochsprung, Victoria Soto, Rachel D'Avino, Mary Sherlach, Anne Marie Murphy and Lauren Rousseau -- were awarded the Citizen Honors Medal, CBS Station WCBS New York reported.