Expression Through Dance from The Brooklyn Ink on Vimeo.

After parents kept coming in to ask whether the Mark Morris Dance Center in Fort Greene had classes for their children with special needs, the dance school decided to create a class to meet demand. The class, taught in eight-week sessions, is geared toward older children who have fewer options for extra-curricular activities and would have trouble keeping up in typical classes for dancers their age. Dance allows students to express themselves in ways that may not be possible otherwise as they deal with disabilities that include Down syndrome, ADHD and autism. The first full academic year of the Dance Fundamentals class ends in early June. Twelve students from Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens are currently enrolled.

Constance and Christopher Stienon of Fort Greene were among the first parents to register their child, Ysolde.

Graffiti is left on the slide in Jackie Robinson Park in Bed-Stuy. (Richard Feloni/The Brooklyn Ink)

It’s a Friday morning at the Jackie Robinson Playground on Malcolm X Boulevard in Bed-Stuy. A young man plays basketball in one of the courts. An older man reads his newspaper on a table near the playground while two grown men, probably in their 30s, loudly discuss if they think women they’ve recently slept with are free of sexually transmitted diseases. One of them leaves the bench he was sitting on to go do pull-ups on the monkey bars. Only two young children are in the park, unattended – a boy plays ball by himself in another court while a girl sits on a swing before getting up and leaving.

“You’ll have some mothers come here with their kids in the mornings sometimes, but it’s random,” said a parks department worker sweeping up the trash liberally scattered throughout the area. Spots of pavement, two water fountains and the jungle gym are dabbled in an ugly off-white paint to cover vandalism. The tennis courts and walkways are clearly old and covered with a layer of dirt.  The worker wouldn’t give her name for fear of endangering her job.

The Parks Department recently came under fire from the city comptroller John Liu, who published an audit in April condemning the department’s Brooklyn branch for not completing playground repairs on a timely basis.  According to the park worker in this Bed Stuy playground, she hasn’t seen any negligence on her department’s behalf.  “I’ve reported things like a tree limb hanging over the main pathway, and they were here I think the next day to cut it down,” she said.

Still, the city’s audit indicated that the parks department may not be as diligent as it could be. The audit conducted from April 1, 2011 to March 31, 2012, found that of the 4,731 work orders for playground repairs and maintenance, only 2,043 (58 percent) were taken care of within 30 days. And of the remainder, 868 took more than three months to address.

The department disputed the reports, saying that the audit did not take into account the complexity of the workload they deal with, and that “we believe the current and action underway already address the issues raised.”

Jackie Robinson Playground was one of the most neglected according to the audit. It took a full 414 days to fix a broken walkway, deemed a “tripping hazard.” And when the comptroller’s team conducted a follow-up in September last year to find unaddressed issues requiring “immediate action,” Jackie Robinson Playground appeared twice in the list of 63 concerns, making it one of several repeat offenders.

“That’s surprising to me,” said the parks worker as she continued to pick up trash, which included empty bottles and junk food wrappers. She said that the park gets busy at the end of the day, when kids use it as a hangout.

She noticed blue graffiti on the old metal slide in the jungle gym, expressing that it shouldn’t contradict what she was saying – it’s just something she has to report a couple times a week, and then it’ll get painted over. She suspects that teenagers are the culprits. “They like this park, I guess,” she said.

A couple blocks away at Fulton Park, Ebony Cruz sat next to her friend Sharette Battle as they watched Ebony’s 5-year-old twins play. That the maintenance of Brooklyn’s playgrounds was in question was hardly a surprise to either of them.

“I actually filed a lawsuit against the city,” said Cruz. She said that her daughter, Kiamiah, was playing at Woods Playground near P.S. 335 several months ago when she fell off the monkey bars and broke a bone in her wrist, causing her to need a cast for two months.

“It’d be one thing if it was her fault, but the bars were so loose they couldn’t support her weight,” said Cruz. “And when she fell, the black rubber piece on the ground – which is meant to protect kids when they fall – provided no cushion because it was so old and worn.”

Cruz and Battle agreed that neglected playground equipment was symptomatic of a bigger problem – complete neglect of general safety in the parks in Bed-Stuy.

“There are always guys hanging around the parks and playgrounds because there are never cops there. They know they can smoke and drink in there,” said Battle.

Cruz said that it’s also for this reason that when she has time to take her kids to play, she prefers a place like Chuck E. Cheese’s, where adults will not be smoking, drinking and swearing, like they do in Jackie Robinson Park.

“Why would I bring my child in there?” she asked.

Second graders in class at the Hellenic Classical Charter School in Park Slope, Brooklyn. (Photo: Ellie Ismailidou / The Brooklyn Ink)

Brooklyn’s school children can fill the Barclays Center 14 times over, with 280,000 enrolled in more than 400 public schools. Some have grown up faster than they should, others are still adjusting to a foreign land and a foreign language. They’ve been raised in the borough that is home to four of the top five most obese neighborhoods in New York City. This year’s report by the Citizens’ Committee for Children shows that they still battle disparities marked by the color of their skin, with more black and Hispanic students facing foster care placement, juvenile incarceration and poor grades than their peers.

The borough’s children face issues of unemployment borne by their parents. Citywide, one in 12 came from another country. In Bedford-Stuyvesant, teenagers are more than twice as likely to be murdered than the city average.

In after-school programs, lunchrooms and basketball courts, every single one of this city-sized population has a story to tell. About fighting obesity one lap or meal at a time. About struggling to understand an education system amid underperforming schools. Their stories could be as simple as a dance class and as complicated as children with special needs that include Down syndrome and autism learning to express themselves through that dance.

Reporters from the Brooklyn Ink spent a month scouring the borough for these stories, here’s what they found:

Running To Escape Obesity Epidemic 

Navigating Two Different Cultures: A Pakistani Immigrant Girl’s Struggles

Lower Income Schools Serve Less Healthy Lunches

A Father and His Love for Basketball Change Bed-Stuy One Dribble at a Time

It’s Not Greek (or Hebrew) to These Brooklyn Students

[VIDEO] Eggs in the Food Desert

[VIDEO] Brooklyn Public School Shuts Down for Good

Postcard from a Playground

[VIDEO] Expressions through Dance

In his studio in Dumbo, Aaron Tyler Kuffner creates a robotic ensemble of traditional Indonesian Gamelan instruments.

He made a guitar from a toothbrush, machine gun and chandelier. He built a piano that creates music by combining sound from various radiostations. Ken Butler is a artist and a musician from Greenpoint who makes instruments out of NYC’s garbage.

Hybrid visions of Ken Butler from The Brooklyn Ink on Vimeo.

Boxer’s Father Void Filled by Coach from The Brooklyn Ink on Vimeo.

Jude Franklin, of Bedford-Stuyvesant, lost his father when he was 11 years old. Years later, Jude followed his father's legacy of boxing by practicing the sport himself. The 18-year-old boxer met his coach Elmo Serrano about three years ago. For Jude, Serrano filled the void of a father. Now, Serrano is helping Jude focus on his goal to become a better fighter and person in general. Jude's goal: to become a professional boxer and champion.

Rafael Codero, a public middle school in Cypress Hill, Brooklyn, is one of 22 public schools in New York City to be phased out due to it’s weak performance. By 2015, the last students will graduate from Rafael Codero. The institution will then be replaced by two charter schools. Current students, teachers and parents are disappointed by the government’s decision.

Workers and customers of ‘Gourmet Bakery and Sweets’ in Brooklyn stare at the television, as a Urdu news channel airs results of 2013 Pakistan elections

Inside ‘Gourmet Bakery and Sweets’ on Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn, a small group was riveted by the television screen, where a private Urdu news channel was airing the results of the 2013 Pakistan elections. Some of them whooped with joy and others groaned with disappointment, as polling outcomes were announced one by one.

“The lion has made everyone flee,” exclaimed the manager Kashif Rana of the well-known Pakistani retail outlet, especially delighted.

He was referring to the election symbol of the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) one of the two main contenders and the party of two-time former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

The elections in Pakistan – the first time since the country’s independence that one democratic government was going to be replaced by another – riveted Pakistanis abroad. They took a keen interest even though they were unable to vote themselves — the Supreme Court of Pakistan had given instructions to the Election Commission of Pakistan to make arrangements to enable overseas Pakistanis to cast their votes, but the mechanism could not be developed on time. Interest was particularly high in the Flatbush area of Brooklyn informally called ‘Little Pakistan’ because of its 11,000 Pakistani Americans – around 27 percent of New York City’s Pakistani population, according to the U.S. 2010 census.

“I feel so upset that Imran Khan has lost that I can barely speak,” said Kashif Sonu, the owner of a glove factory, barely touching the food he had ordered. “The ruling party is composed of very corrupt people and everything will remain the same.”

Though Sharif was always a favorite analysts had also predicted that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) would be able to create a dent in the election results. PTI is headed by Imran Khan who was captain of the Pakistan cricket team before turning to politics. In recent years, his party has gained widespread popularity by banking on the clean image of Khan, who has never been involved in a corruption scandal. His party ended up gaining a majority only in one province Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, out of four.

“I already expected Nawaz Sharif to win but at heart I wanted Imran Khan to win,” said Ghazanfar Khaliq, a travel agent. He had grown up in the United States and spoke with a thick American accent.

Sheikh Saleem, a taxi driver who has been living in the United States for the past 28 years also said that he was disappointed that PTI had lost. “I wanted Tehreek-e-Insaf to win because its policies seem to be effective, that we should not take dictation from anyone and develop a tax culture,” he said. He also asserted that he was happy that at least Imran Khan’s party would not play the role of a friendly opposition.

But not everyone was upset about Sharif’s victory. Wearing shalwar kameez- a traditional Pakistani dress comprising of loose fitted pajamas, a long shirt and a shawl – a mother daughter duo walked into the restaurant. They briefly glanced at the television screen where the men were gathered and then made their way to the lower sections of the cafe. With shining eyes and huge smiles, they gushed about how happy they were that Sharif had won and outlined their hopes for the future.

“Nawaz Sharif is going to improve Pakistan, change everything and build a new Paris in the country,” said the daughter, Samreena Ahmed, 22, a business student at the Hudson Community College.

In the run-up to the polls, both Tehreek-e-Insaf and Sharif’s party carried out massive election campaigns. PTI had never come into power before while PML-N consisted of veteran politicians. Some analysts also believed that the relative inexperience of Imran Khan also took a toll on his election results.

Waqas Akhtar, 26, a pre-medical student at Long Island University supported this notion. “I think Nawaz Sharif is the better candidate and Imran Khan is still young and inexperienced to lead the country,” he said.

Meanwhile, as the results were coming in, videos and images also simultaneously appeared on social media allegedly capturing rigging at a few polling stations.

Jahanzeb Khan, a 25-year-old law student believed that the elections had been fair, but Zul-qar-nain, a banker, said he was convinced that the elections had been rigged because of what he had seen on Facebook.

“I feel disappointed by the result of the elections except for Khyber Pakhtukhwa,” he said. “The people who have been tested for the past 20 years have come into power again.”

Sitting at a table and having ‘chaat’ a traditional delicacy with his friend, Khan Amin a system manager of a convenience store 7-Eleven said he had also wanted Khan to win.

“We have already given a chance to the other parties,” he said.

As Sharif’s party came closer and closer to victory only a few people remained in the restaurant to watch the election results. Waqas Haider, 45, a yellow cab driver, was one of them.

He believed that the results were in tune with the inclination of the public and should not be questioned.

“Nawaz Sharif’s party won because it comprises of experienced politicians and now it is their obligation to deliver,” he said.

He also declared that the president could have given overseas Pakistanis the right to vote much earlier and they were purposefully deprived of having their say in the elections.

Pakistani American customers of ‘Mithas’ restaurant on Coney Island Avenue watch the news as it airs information about the outcome of the polls

At the Pakistani restaurant Mithas, cross the street from Gourmet Bakery, a private Urdu channel was also providing election coverage. Asma Bajwa, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s chief coordinator in New York City, and her friend were glued to the screen.

She said Tehreek-e-Insaf would now be in a position to keep a check on the way the ruling party exercised its power by emerging as a strong opposition.

Bajwa didn’t want to talk about accusations of poll-rigging.

“I don’t want to waste my energy on negativity,” she said. “Whatever we have achieved, we will think positively and grow from our 25 percent.”

East New York is a food desert, a neighborhood with little to no access to fresh produce. As a result, the diet of children growing up here is based mostly on fast food restaurants and bodegas. According to a research by the Citizens Committee for Children, East New York is a high-risk zone for obesity.

But last year, everything changed for dozens of East New York families, when a garden was created in an abandoned lot. This short video story focuses on the Rohas family, showing the influence a community garden can have on one household.

His eyes are serious as he reads the Greek letters. “It was written by Rigas Feraios,” with a shy smile, as he cites the 18^th century Greek political thinker.  When he finishes translating, he runs off to join his classmates for some practice in Greek writing.

Alpha, beta, gamma – for these 8-year-old Brooklynites the Greek alphabet is not just a series of bizarre symbols used in physics; they are actual letters that make sense in the use of the Greek language. As for “Greek life”, to them it will come to mean much more than a college fraternity system. “Greek life” will mean a holistic submersion into Greek language, history and culture for this diverse student community of all races and ethnicities. The school combines the classical study of Greek and Latin with a core curriculum in English on other subjects.

This is not some secluded school directed solely to the Greek community. It is a New York public elementary school, on of 159 New York City charter schools, 61 of which are in Brooklyn. Surprisingly, only 25 percent of the Hellenic school’s students are Greek. The majority of the students are a diverse mosaic of origins and races, with African American and Hispanic being an important part. Just eight years after it was founded, the Hellenic Classical Charter School in South Slope, Brooklyn, already receives around 500 applications each year for 50 available Kindergarten seats.  As a public school, it does not charge tuition. It is one of two language-based charter schools in Brooklyn.  The other, the Hebrew Language Academy in Midwood offers an immersion program in Hebrew.  Like the Hellenic School, the academy is flooded with applications.  Eight years ago, the school opened with 111 students for 125 spots. Every year, 550 students apply for 75 available kindergarten seats.

The idea seems to be catching on: a Hebrew Language Academy charter school has been authorized to open in Harlem this coming August and another three are coming soon to Washington D.C. and in California.

“You go to Europe and many people speak two, three or even four different languages. Here the general perception is more like ‘you need to learn our language,” says Danette Jagla, 41, an African-American cake decorator from Bay Ridge who sends her 9-year-old son to the Hellenic school. “When I first heard of the Hellenic Classical Charter School I thought, ‘If my son gets in, he will have it all lined up for his SAT.’” Her 9-year-old son is now in fourth grade and already speaks conversational Greek.

Although Greek is not a widely spoken language, like English or Spanish, it does have an element of universality, says Joy Petrakos, director of operations of the school. “An important number of English words have a Greek root. Also, Greek words are used in science, math and physics. So, being immersed in the Greek language from a very young age helps students in future exams, such as the SAT,” says Petrakos.

Each class is assigned a Greek teacher that teaches one period of pure Greek instruction per day. In each grade, children are separated into three sections – advanced, intermediate and beginner – according to their abilities in Greek, so that every student can work according to their own capacities.

When students get to the sixth grade, they start learning Latin as well, says Petrakos. “By the time they get to high school and college, they are ahead of the game,” she adds. “Our graduates come back and tell us, ‘I was stuck on a hard question in an exam and could not figure out the right answer. Then the Greek word came to my mind and suddenly it all made sense.’ These stories are increasingly common,” says Petrakos.

Yet, learning another language at an early age is sometimes perceived as too difficult an endeavor. If speaking good English in itself is a hard task, many parents might reasonably ask, how can a child be expected to learn another language at such a young age?

“In reality, the younger the age, the easier it is for a child to learn a foreign language,” says Cynthia Molos, 42, whose two children, aged seven and nine, attend first and fourth grade respectively in the Hellenic Classical Charter School.

Multilingualism is a core characteristic of Molos’s family. She is fluent in Spanish herself, as her parents are Cuban, and she is married to a Greek man who came to the U.S. when he was two years old. Her children speak English, Greek and basic Spanish.

However, when she took a parental course in Greek, Molos felt she “got lost.” This course in reading and writing in Greek is offered by the school to parents, so that they are able to oversee their children’s homework. “The reading and writing in a different alphabet is hard for an adult, because you are used to writing in a certain way all your life. But when a child learns it, it feels easier and natural,” says Molos.

In fact, the more languages a child speaks, says specialized speech therapist Elisabeth Cros, the easier it gets to become better in each one of them,. Cros works with bilingual or trilingual children aged three to ten at the Ecole International de New York, a French-American bilingual school in Manhattan. Her role is to help children correct mistakes in the way they pronounce and write in English, French and Spanish by utilizing knowledge in one language to improve another.

“To be able to speak and write, you first need to hear the language properly. So my job is to familiarize students with the phonological systems and tell them ‘this sound belongs to Spanish, that one to English and that one to French,’” says Cros.

For instance, English and Spanish speakers have trouble spelling the French nasal vowels, a type of vowel that doesn’t exist in English and Spanish. So, a way to determine the correct spelling of a French word with nasal vowels is to find the same word in another language, says Cross.

“For example, children confuse the spelling of the word vent, which means wind in French. The pronunciation of the word could indicate an a, an e, or an i, the three nasal vowels. But if they use the Spanish word for wind, viento, they can figure out that the correct spelling is with an e,” says Cros. Similar techniques can be implemented by students of all ages, for much more complicated words, says Cros.

To help combine the instruction of two different languages, the Hebrew Language Academy charter school in Midwood, has implemented a co-teaching model. Every classroom is assigned a Hebrew teacher and a general studies teacher, who plan the lesson together and deliver it both in English and in Hebrew.

The program seems to be popular; the school has grown since it opened four years ago. It started with just two grades, kindergarten and first-grade, and has been adding one grade per year ever since. It currently offers kindergarten to fourth grade and has 392 students, only 15 percent of whom are of Israeli origin.

When asked what percentage of the students are Jewish, Laura Silver, head of the school, responds that, “we don’t know because, frankly, we don’t even ask.” The reason is that it is important to make a distinction, between a Jewish school and a secular public school that teaches Hebrew language and culture, says Silver,. “We have to be scrupulous so that there is not even the perception that this curriculum is about Jewish people. We don’t teach prayers or ritualistic issues. We study cultures and what people in these cultures do,” she adds.

An illustrative example is the celebration of the Jewish New Year. Students at the HLA charter school study what people in different parts of the world do to celebrate the New Year, says Silver. But they don’t learn the Jewish prayers for the New Year nor do they participate in the relevant Jewish rituals. “We just studied the Chinese New Year customs in Hebrew,” she points out.

Sharon Cohen, a 41-year-old mother of three, was fascinated when her youngest daughter, who is in 4^th grade, was required to study Ethiopian culture and folk tales in Hebrew. “She studies music, drama, poetry, even math and science in Hebrew. As a result, my youngest daughter – with just one hour of pure Hebrew instruction per day – has a better command of the language than my older daughters who are in junior high and in high school and who take four hours of Hebrew per day in a Yeshiva,” Cohen points out.

She attributes this difference to the fact that her younger daughter gets to experience the language instead of just learn how to conjugate verbs or how to read Bible excerpts in old Hebrew. “It is a question of quality rather than quantity,” she concludes.