NICKEL MINES, Pa. — Amish students who survived a shooting that killed five of their classmates plan to attend school in a new building Monday, exactly six months after the massacre, authorities said.
On Friday, boys and girls played in the sun-drenched schoolyard while Amish adults put finishing touches on the new one-room schoolhouse, which comes with a new name — the New Hope Amish School.
The building is more secure than the old one, with more sophisticated locks and reachable only by a private drive.
"It's just another part of the closure process, I guess, and a new beginning," said Mike Hart with the Bart Township Fire Department. He learned of the new name at a meeting last week with members of the Amish board that oversees the school.
Community leaders wanted students in the new building before the school year ends in mid-May, Hart said. Students have been attending classes in a garage since the shooting.
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The new school is located within eyesight of the site of the West Nickel Mines Amish School, which was torn down Oct. 12. Ten days earlier, milk truck driver Charles Carl Roberts IV shot 10 girls inside the school and then committed suicide as police closed in.
It was not immediately clear whether the new school had a telephone.
The Nickel Mines Accountability Committee has collected more than $4 million, part of which paid for construction of the new, partially-brick school, Hart said.
Four of the five wounded girls have returned to school, but the fifth remains in what Hart called "a comatose-type condition." The 6-year-old girl is fed by a feeding tube and cannot communicate, he said.
