Three years after a teenage gunman murdered 19 students and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, a new elementary school in the city opened its doors on Friday, as officials honored the victims of one the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history.

Robb Elementary School, where the rampage took place about two miles away, will not reopen. Legacy Elementary has risen to replace it, slated to welcome around 600 third, fourth and fifth graders on Oct. 20., with a capacity for 800.

Some of the parents of the victims, as well as survivors and local officials, held back tears during a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Friday for the new campus, which is 116,000 square feet, with 36 classrooms on two floors.

“The path to this ribbon-cutting has been long and deeply emotional in the wake of unimaginable tragedy,” said Ashley Chohlis, the superintendent for the Uvalde school district.

In the middle of the new campus is an artistic rendering of a large oak tree, with two large branches representing the fallen teachers and 19 smaller branches for their pupils. Jesse Rizo, an uncle of one of the children killed and now a school board member, invoked their memory as he stood under the tree.

He said he had been thinking about the meaning of the word legacy.

“If you can take anything from the children and the teachers that didn’t come home, it is their innocence and their love,” he told a crowd in the school’s auditorium.