But at some point, classes need to resume. There are now many questions about whether and when a school devastated by the carnage should reopen.
“In many cases, these schools have been closed or completely renovated in an attempt to reduce traumatic reminders to community members,” said the Center for the Prevention of Violence at Philadelphia Children’s Hospital.
It is unclear what will happen to Rob Elementary School, which ended its school year a few days after the May 24 massacre.
But when President Joe Biden visited Uwalde on Sunday, he told Texas Sen. Roland Gutierrez that “we will seek to destroy this school, to build a new one,” Gutierrez told CNN’s KSAT affiliate.
Gutierrez said there was a federal process for granting grants to schools to be destroyed after a mass shooting. And that fact in itself is depressing.
“What kind of world do we live in that legislation is designed to destroy these schools?” Gutierrez told KSAT.
Here’s what happened to other schools after the deadly rampage:
Sandy Hook Elementary School
Date of attack: 14 December 2012
Location: Newtown, Connecticut
Number of victims killed: 26 (including 20 children aged 6 and 7 and six adults)
What happened to the school: The whole school was destroyed and rebuilt.
Three weeks after the horrific attack, Sandy Hook students traveled to the nearby town of Monroe and began attending classes at Chalk Hill Middle School, which is no longer used as a high school. Four years after the massacre, the recently rebuilt Sandy Hook Elementary School is open to students – including fourth-graders who were in kindergarten during the bloodbath.
Columbine High School
Date of attack: 20 April 1999
Location: Littleton, Colorado
Number of victims killed: 13 (including 12 students and one teacher) What happened to the school: Columbine High closed until the end of the school year. Authorities said the attack damaged about 23,000 square feet of the school and left approximately 900 to 1,000 bullet and shrapnel holes in walls and ceilings. Four months later, at the beginning of the new school year, most of the school reopened – except for the library, where most of the carnage followed. It was demolished and replaced with a newly built school library called the Library of Hope.
Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School
Date of attack: 14 February 2018
Location: Parkland, Florida
Number of victims killed: 17 (including 14 students and three employees) What happened to the school: The students returned to campus two weeks after the massacre. But school building 12, where most of the victims were killed, was closed behind emergency tape with covered windows. A new building later replaced the temporary classrooms that students used after the massacre.
High school in Santa Fe
Date of attack: May 18, 2018
Location: Santa Fe, Texas
Number of victims killed: 10 (including eight students and two teachers)
What happened to the school: The students returned 11 days after the bloodshed.
Although there were only two days left until the school year, senior Caitlin Richards said she did not want her high school career to end in slaughter.
“I don’t know if we’ll ever be ready to go back to school,” she told CNN KTRK when day school resumed.
“But I don’t want this last day to be my last memory from last year. I just want to know that I can see all my classmates one more time.
CNN’s Jennifer Henderson contributed to this report.
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