MONROE, Conn. (AP) Students at the Connecticut school where 20 first-graders and six educators were killed in December have returned to classes in a neighboring town.

Newtown's first day of school was Tuesday. The Sandy Hook Elementary School students are being bused to Monroe, where a former middle school was renovated for them shortly after the shootings.

The 400 or so Sandy Hook students are starting their first full school year since the Dec. 14 shootings. Twenty-year-old Adam Lanza shot the 26 victims and killed himself, after fatally shooting his mother at their Newtown home. The motive remains unclear.

Town voters will be asked in October to approve plans to demolish the school where the massacre occurred and build a new one on the same property.

The mother of a 9-year-old girl from Newtown says her daughter was "very happy to be back at school.'' 

Brenda Lebinski says her daughter's transition into the fourth grade was made easier because she was able to have the same teacher as last year. Lebinski says everything ``went well'' this morning -- there was a lot of police presence when we pulled in. There were lots of teachers and therapy dogs greeting the kids when they walked in".

"She was very happy to be back at school," Lebinski said. "Most of the kids were fine."

On one of the school buses carrying the Sandy Hook children on Tuesday morning, a window was decorated with a quotation from the school's slain principal, Dawn Hochsprung: "Be nice to each other. It's really all that matters."

The district has announced a partnership with the John Jay College of Criminal Justice of The City University of New York to review school security measures and make recommendations.