(NECN/NBC News: Jay Gray) - The road to Sandy Hook Elementary is still closed and a sign that used to mark the way to the school has been pulled from it's hinges, just like so many lives in the small town.
"Getting back to the sense of figuring out what the new normal will look like, I think, is important, and I think everybody is just waiting for that to happen," says David Connors, father of a Sandy Hook student.
That waiting ends tomorrow for students who survived the attack.
For the first time, they will be back together and back in class.
Their new school is about seven miles away in the town of Monroe.
Furniture has been moved in from their old school.
Book bags and jackets will be put in the same places they were that Friday.
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"That's really a big thing for the kids that their class looks exactly the same," says Connors. That they're sitting next to same people that they have the same friends in the same places and everything on the walls looks like the same."
There will be one noticeable difference, a heavy and visible police presence.
"Right now it has to be the safest school in America," says Monroe Police Lt. Keith White.
Green ribbons will welcome the students back.
What they won't see are the mountains of stuffed animals, flowers and signs that spread across the town in the days following the shooting.
Crowds of mourners and the memorials are all gone now.
Newtown is quiet again, but the pain and loss in this community still lingers, along with questions about why it happened and how to move on.
