14 MAY 23, 2019 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
Rego middle school plants tree for Poway
BY MAX PARROTT
MPARROTT@SCHNEPSMEDIA.COM
@RIDGEWOODTIMES
Jennifer Gruet, a dance teacher at
Stephen A. Halsey J.H.S. 157 in Rego
Park, said she was surprised and
touched when she came back from a
family funeral to learn that her school’s
gardening club made plans to plant a
tree honoring her relative.
In this case, Gruet’s family tragedy
took on national significance. She
had just arrived from San Diego,
where she had mourned the loss of
her cousin Lori Kaye, who was killed
in the Poway Synagogue shooting in
California last month, shielding her
rabbi from the gunman’s bullets.
“It was unexpected — I had no idea
they were going to do this in her
honor,” said Gruet of the tree planting.
“Everything they said at the funeral
was all about growth, acceptance,
tolerance and preaching love instead
of hate, so I think the tree is a nice
representation of some of the ideas
they talked about.”
When they heard about Gruet’s
relationship to Kaye, the Green Team,
a group of student gardeners, and the
Parent Teacher Association snapped
into action, finding a spot for an
Eastern Red Bud right in front of the
school’s main entrance. Students,
Jennifer Gruet hugs a community member during the tree planting
ceremony dedicated to her cousin Lori Kaye. Photo : Max Parrott/
QNS
parents and community members
held a tree planting ceremony
Thursday afternoon.
“That’s why we’re here today. In
remembrance and in celebration of
those three rights that we enjoy: hope,
love and peace,” Principal Vincent
Suraci said during the ceremony.
Gruet told QNS that she had
inherited her love of dance from her
cousin, who she grew up with. Coming
from a family of teachers, Gruet and
Kaye were the two performers of the
bunch.
“Kaye did this program called ‘Up
with People’ when she was 18. She
toured with this program across the
country singing and dancing and just
trying to spread love,” Gruet said.
During the May 16 ceremony, Gruet
joined members of the Green Team
to shovel soil and mulch over the
tree’s roots. The tree planting is one
of the many service projects that the
student landscaping crew has taken
on to improve their school.
In its fruitful year and a half of
existence, the team has redesigned
the facade of the building, built a
greenhouse, created a makeshift
hydroponics system and started a
farm-to-table program, and it’s about
to put in a drip irrigation system to
start conserving water.
“We got a plant sale if you got some
cash on you,” said the club’s facilitator
Chris Weiss with a chuckle.
The Green Team dutifully took
part in the gardening work during
the ceremony. Gruet said that for the
most part her students hadn’t made
the connection between the national
news coverage of the Poway shooting
and their dance teacher. But she did
have one class that heard about so
she talked to them in very factual
terms about what happened.
“I feel like if anything at all comes
out of this, it’s people learning about
other people’s cultures. Once you
know about something it’s not that
scary anymore. I think the nice
thing about having the funeral
livestreamed, as weird as it was,
was it hopefully normalized some
of the cultures and traditions of that
synagogue,” said Gruet.
Queens DA race heats up on jail stances
BY BILL PARRY
BPARRY@SCHNEPSMEDIA.COM
@RIDGEWOODTIMES
As the June 25 Democratic
primary draws closer, tensions
are beginning to rise in the
fi eld of seven candidates in the race for
Queens District Attorney.
This week, retired Judge Greg
Lasak issued a challenge to one of his
opponents, Queens Borough President
Melinda Katz over the controversial
proposal for a community-based jail
in Kew Gardens.
Lasak blasted Katz for belatedly
announcing her opposition to the $30
billion Rikers Island clearance plan
that would move detention centers into
neighborhoods in Queens, the Bronx,
Brooklyn and Manhattan.
“Voters should not be fooled,” Lasak
said. “Melinda Katz still wants a new
jail in Queens. Only now, she won’t tell
us where she wants to put it.”
Katz backed the city’s plan at
the start of 2019 but began to feel a
backlash brewing among civic groups
in Kew Gardens and in its surrounding
neighborhoods. In January, Katz fi red
off a letter to City Hall suggesting the
entire process should start over again
with more community and stakeholder
involvement.
After Community Board 9 voted
unanimously, 28-0, to oppose the
construction of the new jail in Kew
Gardens, Katz made her opposition to
the proposal clear.
Lasak issued his challenge to Katz
saying, “Join me today and pledge to
fi ght any prison plan, anywhere in the
borough of Queens.”
Before he retired from the bench
aft er 15 years in order to run for Queens
DA, Lasak served as a top prosecutor in
the Queens DA’s offi ce for 25 years.
“Aft er an entire career of sending
people to suff er on Rikers Island, it’s
no surprise that Greg Lasak wants that
same culture of abuse and violence to
continue,” Katz campaign spokesman
Grant Fox said. “Before he decided to run
for District Attorney, Mr. Lasak never
for a moment considered reforming
the criminal justice system, and his
ludicrous plan to build another Rikers
all over again refl ects that inexperience.
Meanwhile, Melinda has been engaged
with the city, the community, and
other boroughs throughout the entire
process and came to the conclusion to
oppose the current plan that ignores
any input from Queens residents.”
Lasak believes the money that would
be used to build the four communitybased
jails would be better spent
demolishing the current prison
complex on Rikers Island in order to
build a new state-of-the-art correctional
facility.
“To have real reform we must have
a new facility of Rikers Island that is
safe for prisoners, their families, and
especially Correction Officers who
have one of the toughest jobs in the
criminal justice system,” Lasak said.
Fox believes Katz decided to oppose
the plan over time, aft er a series of
community meetings hearing opinions
and complaints about the process.
“She’s proposing real solutions to
create a fairer criminal justice system,
whereas the only thing Mr. Lasak has
to off er in naive empty rhetoric and a
path back to the same broken system,”
Fox said.
When Lasak released his plan to
rebuild Rikers in late March he said
shovels could hit the ground right
away to ensure that conditions were
improved to provide inmates basic
human dignity in a more timely
fashion.
“The entire plan to close Rikers
was prefaced on decreasing violence,
increasing services and changing the
culture at the jail on Rikers Island,” he
said. “Those are the goals I share, but
solving them 10 years from now is not
the answer.”
Retired Judge Greg Lasak (left) and Queens Borough President Melinda
Katz Illustration via QNS from fi le and Twitter photos, @GregLasak
/WWW.QNS.COM
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