Sandy Hook Elementary kids resume classes at new school building

Classes resumed on Thursday for the more than 400 Sandy Hook Elementary students who lived through the harrowing assault three weeks ago.

Across Connecticut's sprawling Sandy Hook neighborhood where the Dec. 14 attack took place, children bundled in heavy winter coats boarded buses decked in green and white ribbons, their school colors, for the seven-mile journey to their new school.

Chalk Hill Middle School, an unused school in the neighboring town of Monroe, was refurbished specifically for the students from Newtown, and now bears a new but familiar name -- Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Students on packed buses waved at clusters of photographers and TV cameras gathered at street corners along the bus route.

Anca Roberto, 35, put her 5-year-old daughter, a kindergartner, on the bus not far from the old Sandy Hook school, which remains a bullet-riddled crime scene closed to everyone but police.

At the old Sandy Hook school, where 20 first-graders and six adults were killed, a handful of police and emergency vehicles could be seen still parked in the parking lot on Thursday.

The students, "hugged, and they played and they were just kids," Roberto said. "The teachers were just amazing."

With safety foremost on the minds of parents, the school has been outfitted with a new security system and Monroe Police Department officers patrolled the grounds.