SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Let's turn now to Newtown, Connecticut, where a little over a month ago, a gunman killed 20 children and six educators at the Sandy Hook Elementary School. After the shooting, students and teachers at Sandy Hook were transferred to a building in a neighboring town. And now, as Craig LeMoult of member WSHU reports, residents of Newtown are grappling with the question of what to do with the building where the shooting took place, and whether to build a new school.
CRAIG LEMOULT, BYLINE: Newtown officials held a second public meeting last night, to hear what community members think should happen to the Sandy Hook school. Jackie Hornack has lived in Sandy Hook her whole life. She said it would be disrespectful to keep the school running, as if nothing happened; and she said the good and bad memories of Sandy Hook would not be lost, if the school building is replaced by a memorial.
JACKIE HORNACK: And it certainly does not mean that that troubled man is now taking our school, too. It means that those who did not make it out of that building will be remembered and honored.
LEMOULT: She and several other speakers said the town should build a new elementary school nearby. Police officer Todd Keeping lives in the Sandy Hook neighborhood; and requested to be assigned to the school the students now attend, in the neighboring town of Monroe. He said that - not the building where the shooting happened - is now Sandy Hook School.
TODD KEEPING: Today, I was thinking to myself, I'm walking down the hall, and it sounded like a school. They are smiling. They are happy.
LEMOULT: He said every day, it seems to get a little bit easier.
KEEPING: You want to keep these teachers? Then you cannot ask any one of them to ever, ever go back there.
LEMOULT: Daniel Krauss said his daughter, Rachel, is a second-grader at Sandy Hook.
DANIEL KRAUSS: She fondly remembers Principal Hochsprung during the book fair as she dressed up as the Book Fairy, with her light-up fairy dress.
LEMOULT: Principal Dawn Hochsprung was one of the six adults killed in the shooting. Krause said his daughter wants to go back to the old building.
KRAUSS: Sandy Hook is home, and a special place. Yet as I listen to everybody, I think I really go back to my feeling of - that we need to listen to what the teachers and the staff have to say.
LEMOULT: Newtown First Selectwoman Pat Llodra says figuring out what to do will be a long process. She says she's beginning to meet privately with teachers and staff, to see what they think. For NPR News, I'm Craig LeMoult in Connecticut.
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