Julio Cortez / AP

This aerial photo shows Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., the site of the Dec. 14 shooting that left 20 children and six staffers dead. As residents weigh in on the future of the building, students are attending school at a different facility.

Town leaders in Newtown, Conn., continue to hear from residents about what should become of the building where 20 children and six educators lost their lives in a mass shooting in December.

More than 100 people gathered inside Newtown High School on Friday for the second public hearing on the topic. Some in the crowd voiced their opinions on what they believe should happen to the Sandy Hook Elementary School building. Others watched and listened.

"I think that building should be a memorial. I don't think it should ever be a school again," said Josie Schmidt, a Newtown resident who is also a retired school teacher.

"I know what happened there. I see it. You cannot ask anyone to go back in there," said Todd Keeping, a Newtown resident and Monroe police officer who was at the school in the days after the tragedy.

Besides hearing from the public, town officials are also meeting privately with families of the victims and survivors. They're also meeting with teachers and staff.

"The decision-makers should be the families. I think we all are entitled to our opinions, but I think what they say should go," said Taylor Ansbro of Newtown.

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One staff member, library clerk Mary Ann Jacob, spoke during the meeting and said she was inside the school when the shooting happened. "I'll be there wherever it is, because it's important to me to help the rest of the children in this community heal," Jacob said.

A recommendation on what to do with the building could come by spring, town officials said.

"We are Sandy Hook School and we choose love," said Jacob, to heavy applause from the audience.

For now, Sandy Hook children are learning at the former Chalk Hill school in Monroe, Conn., where they're expected to remain through the next school year, according to First Selectman Patricia Llodra.

As they weigh options for the future, splitting the children up into different schools around Newtown is not one that's under consideration, said Llodra and other officials.

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Retired psychologist Gene Rosen was hailed as a hero for taking six terrified first-graders into his home and giving them fruit juice during the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.

The four girls and two boys told Rosen they couldn’t return to class because a man with guns had killed their teacher. Indeed Victoria Soto was among the 26 dead – 20 children and six staffers – gunned down by Adam Lanza at the Newtown, Conn., school that day.

“I comforted them because I’m a grandfather,” Rosen, 69, who lives across the street from the school, said in an appearance on TODAY after the tragedy. “They were mortified.”

Now, Rosen and his wife are scared. He says he is being harassed by so-called Sandy Hook "truthers," conspiracy theorists who believe that facts about Newtown are being covered up by the media or other forces as part of a government or anti-gun plot.

“I’m getting emails with, not direct threats, but accusations that I’m lying, that I’m a crisis actor,” Rosen told the online magazine Salon. A white supremacist message board, Salon said, had ridiculed the “emotional Jewish guy.” 

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A photo of Rosen's home was posted online and fake social network accounts have been created in his name, according to the report. Blog posts call him a fraud. “What is the going rate for getting involved in a gov’t sponsored hoax anyway?” said one message accusing him of acting, according to Salon.

“The quantity of the material is overwhelming,” Rosen said, adding that his wife is worried for their safety.

Rosen’s treatment is the outgrowth of Newtown shooting conspiracy theories expanding on the Internet. Such claims are even coming from sources that appear to be mainstream.

Florida Atlantic University communications professor James Tracy, who in a blog post stated, “While it sounds like an outrageous claim, one is left to inquire whether the Sandy Hook shooting ever took place – at least in the way law enforcement authorities and the nation’s news media have described.”

Or reporter Ben Swann, who questioned police accounts of the Aurora, Colo., shootings as well as the Sandy Hook massacre in an online program called “Full Disclosure.” Swann, in both instances, latches on to witness accounts reported in the early confusion of the tragedies to question whether more than one gunman was involved. There is “reason to question this whole narrative,” Swann said.

Some of the conspiracy theories blame Jewish people for roles in the Newtown tragedy. Those claims even led Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League to respond. In a blog post Foxman laments the inevitable rumor mill that sprouts up on the Internet after major disasters and tragedies that the news media is hiding the truth and that Jews or Israel play a role.

“But never in a million years did I think that the shootings at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, an event that has so traumatized Americans and shocked people the world over, would become the latest fodder for cynical anti-Semites and anti-Israel conspiracy theorists,” Foxman wrote.

Conspiracy theories are nothing new, the ADL's Director of Investigative Research Mark Pitcavage points out, but they come in different stripes. One type is based on a single event, such as Sandy Hook, rather than a long-running series of complex machinations spanning the globe. 

"What they tend to share is an incident occurs that is large and heinous, so much so that psychologically there will be people who are unwilling to accept a simple explanation for how the event took place," Pitcavage told NBC News.

Whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating John F. Kennedy 50 years ago is considered the "ultimate example."

"Psychologically people are unwilling, unprepared to accept that it was a lone gunman. So if they can't accept that, there must be some other explanation. That's why these conspiracy theories emerge."

The terrorist attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, also spawned conspiracy theories, and led to the coining of the phrase "truthers" to describe them.

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The children of Sandy Hook Elementary School returned to class Thursday, filling buses that took them to a new building where they were thrilled to reconnect with their friends and teachers after three weeks of mourning.

“Most of the kids were excited,” said Monroe, Conn., Police Lt. Keith White.

“They were anxious to get into the hallways and meet up with the other kids, and you could see the teachers had the same response.”

The 400-plus students had not been back to school since Adam Lanza blasted his way into Sandy Hook and killed 20 first-graders, six staffers and himself with a semi-automatic rifle.

Their old school in Newtown is still a crime scene, so an unused middle school in nearby Monroe was refurnished for them.

Teachers tried to make the new surroundings as familiar as possible. Their old desks were brought in, along with backpacks, coats, and lunch boxes that were left behind as they fled on Dec. 14.

Even the new principal was a known face: 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.

Yet there were also reminders of how much the Sandy Hook community has changed since the shooting rocked the nation and stirred debate on gun control.

Monroe Police Dept. / AP

This photo provided by the Monroe Police Department shows the new Sandy Hook Elementary School on the first day of classes in Monroe, Conn. The school, formerly known as Chalk Hill School, was overhauled especially for the students from Sandy Hook

Police officers and counselors were on hand. Parents were allowed to stay in the building for the day. And children cuddled with therapy dogs.

He said attendance was robust, with most school buses full as they rumbled down streets that had been decorated with balloons and welcome signs.

Andrew Paley said he waited for the bus with his 9-year-old twins at the bottom of his driveway Thursday morning.

“They just ran on. They didn’t even look back,” he said. “There was probably some anxiety but it was more excitement. They both love school, so they loved going back.’

PhotoBlog: See images of Sandy Hook students returning to class for first day

While security was very visible, it will become more low-key as the weeks pass in an effort to restore some normalcy.

“We don’t want them to think this is a police state,” White said. “We want them to know that this is a school and a school first, and that’s a place that they are to come to learn, enjoy their friends and grow up.

“We want to move on and let the kids move on, too.”

Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy said it took a “Herculean effort” to prepare the school in Monroe for the Sandy Hook kids.

He also announced a commission that will spearhead legislative and policy reforms designed to ensure no other children have to endure the horror they survived.

“We don’t yet know the underlying cause behind this tragedy, and we probably never will,” he said, referring the mystery of Lanza’s motive for attacking the school. “But that cannot be an excuse for inaction.”

He said the 15-member commission would look at three areas -- school security, mental health services, and gun laws.

“If 30-round clips had continued to be illegal in the nation or in our state, the availability of that clip to this particular perpetrator may not have existed,” Malloy said.

“These things aren’t used to hunt deer. You don’t need a 30-round clip to go hunting ... to honor the Constitution of the United States.”

The panel, which will issue recommendations in March, will be headed by Hamden Mayor Scott Jackson, who said the issues resonated with him personally.

“This is an issue that touches us all,” Jackson said. “My son is in first grade.”

NBC News' Joo Lee contributed to this report.

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.

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New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, left, meets with former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, right center, and her husband, Mark Kelly, on Wednesday.

Former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle "Gabby" Giffords, who survived a shooting at a campaign event in Arizona two years ago and now advocates stricter gun laws, plans to be in Newtown, Conn., on Friday for a private late afternoon meeting.

Giffords plans to be at a home in the town where 20 first-graders and six staffers were gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary School, a spokesperson for Gov. Dan Malloy's office told NBCConnecticut.com.

The meeting, the details of which are unclear, comes a day after more than 400 Sandy Hook students returned to class in a new building. Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman's spokesman Steve Jensen later told the AP that the visit was "planned but not confirmed" for Friday afternoon.

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Giffords was shot in the head outside a supermarket in Tucson at a meet-the-congresswoman event in 2011. Six people were killed in that attack.

Since then, Giffords and her husband, former astronaut Mark Kelly, have campaigned against gun violence and have been outspoken in their support of an assault weapons ban.

The day of the Sandy Hook shooting three weeks ago, Kelly tweeted, “20 - 5 year olds gunned down in their own classroom. When will we address this problem as a nation? The time is now.”

On his Facebook page, Kelly wrote a more lengthy statement, saying that “our response must consist of more than regret, sorrow, and condolence. The children of Sandy Hook Elementary School and all victims of gun violence deserve leaders who have the courage to participate in a meaningful discussion about our gun laws - and how they can be reformed and better enforced to prevent gun violence and death in America. This can no longer wait.”

Kelly also said that Gabby sends her prayers to the victims.

A week later, Kelly wrote he was disappointed by the NRA’s “defiant and delayed response to the massacre.” In a news conference that was the NRA's first public statement on the shootings, CEO Wayne LaPierre had blamed violent video games and movies, as well as the media, gun-free zones at schools and other factors.

On Wednesday, Kelly and Giffords met with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has been an outspoken leader for gun control and is founder of a group called Mayors Against Illegal Guns. On “Meet the Press” in February 2012, Bloomberg expressed outrage that the Giffords shooting hadn’t sparked more action on gun control by Congress.

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“You’d think that if a congresswoman got shot in the head, that would have changed Congress’ views,” Bloomberg said. “I can tell you how to change it, just get Congress to come with me to the hospital when I've got to tell somebody that their son or daughter, their spouse, their parent is not going to come home ever again.”

What Bloomberg, Giffords and Kelly discussed in their meeting has not been confirmed.

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