Lt. Keith White says Sandy Hook students were excited to see friends as they returned to school on Thursday for the first time since the Dec. 14 massacre in Newtown, Conn.
By John Newland and Tracy Connor, NBC News
For the first time in almost three weeks, students from Sandy Hook Elementary School did something Thursday that had once seemed so natural: They went to school.
Their new classrooms have been furnished to look like the ones they left behind when 20-year-old Adam Lanza used an assault rifle to kill 20 of their classmates and six adult staff members.
Though they entered a new building, several miles away from Newtown, Conn., in Monroe, where there was an unused school that has been renamed Sandy Hook Elementary, their old desks were there to greet them. So were items left behind in the chaos: backpacks, coats, lunch boxes.
Students return to class for the first time since a gunman killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. They are attending a neighboring school that has been filled with items from the original building. NBC's Rehema Ellis reports.
Teachers and other staff members spent much of the holiday season trying to make the new Sandy Hook look welcoming, putting up paper snowflakes sent in from around the world.
"This does not look like the other elementary school," Newtown School Superintendent Janet Robinson said. "At one point there were 80 people in the building, cleaning out the building ... painting to make it really look cheerful and happy."
Sandy Hook mom on return to school: Anguish, hope
The school's 500 students found extra police officers, counselors and a new but familiar principal. Donna Page, who retired from the role at Sandy Hook in 2010, agreed to come back after her successor, Dawn Hochsprung, was killed in the rampage.
Authorities won?t elaborate on security measures, but several security devices have been put in place and police are stopping every vehicle that goes onto the campus.?
Shannon Stapleton / Reuters
Children from Sandy Hook Elementary School make their way to their new school in Monroe Conn. As they leave Newtown on Jan. 3.
PhotoBlog: See images of?Sandy Hook students returning to class for first day
Monroe Police Lt. Keith White said parents don?t have to worry.??Right now, it has to be the safest school in America,? he said.
Robinson added: ?It feels extremely secure there.?
It will have to. The children face a difficult but critical transition as they try to find comfort in their new place of learning.
?They?re going to be frightened and feel very insecure about going back, but a lot of them are going to be resilient,? counselor Thalia Andernen of the Center for Hope told NBC New York.
Parents were allowed to accompany their kids in the school on the first day back, NBC's Rehema Ellis reported Thursday on TODAY.
Children will resume their normal school schedule, Robinson said.
"We will go to our regular schedule, and do the kinds of things that we know are good for kids," she said.
In Newtown, Conn., scene of the shootings that killed 20 children and seven adults this month, empty stockings that had been hung as reminders of loss are now filled with gifts. In places spared the direct impact of tragedy, Americans kept those less fortunate in their thoughts. NBC News' John Yang reports.
David Connors, 40, has 8-year-old triplets. He said sending kids back to school was crucial for everyone.
?The past three weeks have been just crazy,? he told NBC Connecticut. ?Getting back to that sense of figuring out what the new normal is going to look like, I think, is important. Everyone is waiting for that to happen.?
His children are ready for the transition, he said. ?They want to see their teacher. They want to see their classes. They want to get back into a routine.?
Full coverage of the Sandy Hook shooting from NBC News
On Wednesday, the students and their families were welcomed at an open house at their new school, which was formerly the Chalk Hill Middle School in Monroe. Students received gift boxes with toys inside and shared joyful reunions with teachers.
One father, Vinny Alvarez, took a moment to thank his third-grade daughter's teacher, Courtney Martin, who protected the class from a rampaging gunman by locking her classroom door and keeping the children in a corner.
"Everybody there thanked her in their own way," he said.
The massacre in Newtown, a rural New England town of 27,000 residents, prompted President Barack Obama to call it the worst day of his presidency and reignited an extensive debate on gun control. Obama has tasked Vice President Joe Biden with assembling a package of gun-control proposals to submit to Congress in the next several weeks.
The National Rifle Association has rebuffed calls for more stringent firearms restrictions and instead called for armed guards to patrol every public school in the country.
After a week of calls for tighter gun restrictions, the National Rifle Association called for putting more armed security officers in the nation's schools and expressed concerns about violence portrayed in video games, movies and music. NBC's Pete Williams reports.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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