Valley Stream students spruce up their community

If you had the chance to walk down Fletcher Avenue this week, you may have realized there’s not much garbage in the street or on the sidewalks. You can thank Central High School and Memorial Junior High School students, who took time out of their days to give back to their schools and communities.

On April 20, after the school day ended, Central’s appropriately named EnviroCentral Club organized a Fletcher Avenue cleanup. About a dozen students walked from the school to Merrick Road, picking up napkins, cups, straws and even a steak knife along the way.

Kerri Guzzardo, an earth science teacher at Central, is one of the faculty advisors for the group along with Katie Prudente. Guzzardo said she was glad to see students getting involved. “We show that there are students who want to do something positive,” Guzzardo said, “and want to go out and show the community that we care, and that we’re part of it too.”

Senior Stephanie Singh, the president of EnviroCentral, wants to do her part to help improve the Valley Stream community. “We do it a few times a year so we can appreciate our society, help take care of it and do our part,” Singh said of the cleanup. “As citizens of our society, it’s best for the world to keep it clean. We live in this world and we should take care of it.”

Members of the EnviroCentral Club walked south along Fletcher Avenue because that’s where the largest population of students walk during their free periods. Although there is often litter and trash on the nearby streets, Guzzardo aims to show that Central is populated by teenagers who care about their community.

“We don’t want a few students to represent the mass,” she said. “There are students that do want to keep our streets nice and clean.”

Legislator Carrié Solages addressed the students before they went on their cleanup and told them he supports their mission. Solages acquired bags and gloves from Home Depot to donate to the EnviroCentral Club.

“It inspires me to see young kids on a Friday afternoon, when they could be hanging out, playing around with their friends, going out and cleaning things up,” Solages said. “It inspires me to work even harder and promote the issues that they care about.”

He added that he hopes to help facilitate more events like this in the future.

Not to be outdone, students at Memorial had their own cleanup on the morning of April 21 on the school grounds. Science teacher Erin Primm organized the event and said that 49 students woke up early on a Saturday morning to help out. The students also planted flowers in front of the school after the cleanup was completed.

“I was so touched and overwhelmed with positive feelings just seeing these kids help out,” Primm said. “They’re 13-, 14- and 15-year-olds — they’re not always looked at in the best light, so seeing these kids doing something really good for the community they live in and the school they go to was a great feeling.”

Several parents and younger siblings attended the event, along with Mayor Ed Fare and Village Justice Robert Bogle, to show their support. Aside from helping out their community, students also received community service credit for their college applications and in some cases, extra credit for classes.

Primm said that there are always students who want to help out, but the adults in the community need to step up and do their part, too. “It’s absolutely important for our children now to have role models in situations like this,” she said, adding that the kids need “more adults that are good role models and give opportunities like this for them to do good things for the community.”