Read more at the NYDailyNews.com.

Read more at NY1.com.

P.S. 217, one of the schools affected by overcrowding (Chika Okaneme/The Brooklyn Ink)

It’s a timeless American scene that warms the heart, but what it hides is something else.   P.S. 139, and many other schools throughout Brooklyn, are growing increasingly over-crowded—and the problem is likely to only get worse for the foreseeable future.

According to the New York City Department of Education’s 2010-2011 capacity report, about a third of NYC elementary school buildings are over capacity. Nearly a hundred of these schools are in Brooklyn. Out of the 5,003 new seats the department provided to schools this year, Brooklyn— the most populated borough—received only 343 of them. Yet, the borough continues to grow as a popular destination for young American and immigrant families looking for affordable housing and charming neighborhoods.

But as Mildred Decker, a young single mother with a child in P.S. 139, worries:  “If the school’s overcrowded, how is a kid supposed…to get the right amount of help?”

Her concern can be seen in spades in Community Board 14, which represents the Flatbush, Midwood, and eastern Kensington neighborhoods.  Three schools in CB14’s part of school district 22— P.S. 217, 139 and 315— are over-capacity, according to the department of education’s report. In October, the board completed its fiscal year 2013 capital and expense budget and recommended that a new elementary school be built.

“Overcrowding has been a persistent problem…for many, many years…and this has been a recommendation for consecutive budgets” stated Shawn Campbell, the community board’s district manager. “The biggest challenge in meeting this or any other capital need is the constraints on the budget in the City of New York in these difficult financial times.”

“It’s been a problem in Brooklyn and citywide” said Christopher Spinelli, president of Community Education Council District 22, the “budget is degrading year by year.” Recently, the state reduced its contribution to city education by $1.4 billion. There have been thousands of teacher layoffs and a series of school budget cuts.

Schools are having trouble finding room for incoming students. “Principals are having to do more with less. They’re not able to open up additional classes, so… they have to continue to fill a class until it’s at capacity” Spinelli said. “In some cases they wind up going over capacity since you really can’t turn a child away.”

Residents are growing increasingly restless. “We’re getting more complaints now than ever before,” Spinelli said, “because principals are not able to open up more classes and hire more teachers. So we’re definitely seeing more issues with overcrowding.”

Spinelli went to an overcrowded school as a child, and his children are now in the same situation.  “My children have always been in classes that are at the maximum capacity and I don’t think that is an ideal learning situation” he said. “You always want a smaller class size.”

Repeated research shows that class size has a major impact on learning, student-teacher relationships, teaching quality, and overall academic success. In the 1980s, the landmark Tennessee Project STAR study, for example, showed that a class size between 13-17 students, for grades K through 3, resulted in higher test scores. According to the U.S. Department of Education, these results were especially significant for minority children and those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

Subsequent research also supports the Tennessee findings.  In a study published this year by Switzerland’s University of Teacher Education St. Gallen and the University of London, reducing class sizes by even one student can improve learning. The study also suggested that a class of 17 students or less is ideal.

The city department of education has a set of target class sizes for different elementary school levels— 18 students for Pre-K, 20 for grades K-3, and 28 for grades 4-8. All of these numbers are lower than the city’s previous class size standards, but they are higher than what many researchers think is the best class size for optimal learning.

Deckard’s five-year old daughter is currently enrolled in one of P.S. 139’s kindergarten classes. “I was aware of [the overcrowding] that’s why I didn’t want her to go to that school” she said, but she felt as though she had no choice. She was told to send her daughter to a zone school. Before registering her child, she tried to contact the school board to see if there was any way for her child to enroll someplace else, but she was either shooed away or left without a response. “I just feel like it’s kind of messed up” she said.

Her child’s kindergarten class has about 21 students. Deckard says she was in a kindergarten class about that same size when she was little, but there was one major difference. “I remember when I was in kindergarten I had two teachers” she said.  If the school cannot reduce the class size, she wishes there was at least another teacher in the classroom so that her child could receive more attention and better instruction.

Beth Orchulli, a stay-at-home mother of two, never went to an overcrowded school— but because of P.S. 217 her children now do. Although her son’s pre-k class is a descent size, her second grade son is in a class with about 25 other students.

When her family moved into the neighborhood two years ago, she already presumed that her sons would go to an overcrowded school. “It’s unavoidable unless you can afford private school,” she said.

Nevertheless, she wants change. “I think the children suffer,” she said. “There should be a bigger commitment to building more schools.”

Leonie Haimson, founder and Executive Director of Class Size Matters, is determined to stop overcrowding in New York City public schools. For the past 15 years she has used her organization as a means to inform the public about large class sizes and to push government into using state funding more effectively. “The Department of Education is legally mandated to [reduce] class sizes in all grades and they have not done so,” she said. “Instead they have allowed class sizes to increase.”

Children at the school playground in P.S. 217 (Chika Okaneme/The Brooklyn Ink)

The Contract for Excellence has been providing state funding to the city department of education since 2007. Under contract, the money can only be used for certain purposes, which includes reducing class sizes. However Haimson believes officials are not doing enough.

Since 2002, Mayor Bloomberg has had control of the New York City education system, not the Board of Education. “The city has been neglectful and remiss for many years, and it has gotten much worse under the Bloomberg administration” she said. Mayoral control will stay in effect until 2015.

“Early grades [are] the largest in 11 years” Haimson said, “so [the administration is] violating the law and [is] in essence violating our children’s constitution rights to adequate education.”

Although people are troubled by the current overcrowding situation, the city’s education department does not provide them with much hope. Frank Thomas, a spokesperson from the city department of education, said that overcrowding in CB 14’s part of school district 22 is not severe enough to cause much concern. “We only have so [many] resources to do work with,” he said.

And so after receiving proposals from across the city, the department believes that other parts of New York are in greater need for new schools at the moment. It may be some time before the residents in the CB 14 area see that desired new school.

The sign has been removed for now, and police are investigating the incident. No arrests have yet been made in the graffiti incident or last Friday’s wave of vandalism.

The New York Observer reports swastika paintings, car burnings and “KKK” graffiti in the Midwood section of Brooklyn earlier this month, and MyFoxNY.com reported similar graffiti on libraries and a synagogue in Queens’Jackson Heights and East Elmhurst during the same period.

The incidents occurred days after the Anti-Defamation League released a new survey showing anti-Semitism on the rise across the United States since 2009.

City Investigations patrol stand outside the home of an arson victim in Midwood (Omar Akhtar / The Brooklyn Ink)

On Saturday morning, Chaim Weiser opened the newspapers and saw something he says shook him to his core.  It was something he had seen 70 years ago. Back then, it had marked the beginning of the Holocaust.

Arsonists had torched three cars and painted several park benches with red swastikas and the letters “KKK” in an act of anti-Semitic vandalism that took place in the early hours of Friday morning. The cars were parked on Ocean Parkway, between Avenues J and I, in a quiet, leafy neighborhood of Midwood, a predominantly Jewish area.

“I’m very shook up, it’s very, very close to me” said Weiser, an 82-year-old Holocaust survivor who spent years in a concentration camp before being liberated in 1945. “I remember when I was a kid, I saw this kind of stuff and I used to say, ‘it’s just kids, just vandals, it’ll never become anything dangerous.’ Deep down, I hope it’s nothing but juvenile pranks. But you can’t help thinking history repeats itself.”

Weiser says his biggest fear is that the crime will be forgotten. “A few people came out yesterday to protest the incident, a couple of stories in the news, but then what? Nothing! People are going to forget about this incident until the next one, when it’s too late.”

Three days later, there are disturbing remnants of the incident.  There are uneven blotches on the park benches where the graffiti has been whitewashed.  One of the benches is missing a bottom and is wrapped in blue and white police tape. The road has telltale black burn marks and you can still smell the charred asphalt in the air.

Boruch Weiss and Mosag Klein are two students who stopped to look at the site. Klein described the incident as “very, very terrible.” Weiss took things a step further, echoing what Weiser had said. “I look at it as the start of the Holocaust” he said. “People say it can’t happen, but it did happen. People have to know that it happened. The NYPD needs to send a clear message.”

Weiss and Klein say the timing of the incident was especially alarming, since it took place the day after the anniversary of “Kristallnacht”, or “The Night of The Broken Glass”, when on the night of November 9 and 10, 1938 the Nazis committed a series of attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and some parts of Austria. The event is widely regarded as the precursor to the Holocaust.

Last week’s vandalism seems to have shattered the idyll of this quiet Brooklyn neighborhood. Television crews circle the area while reporters stop people walking by to ask them questions. But people are reluctant to talk. Outside one of the houses next to the scene stands a man in a blue jacket emblazoned with words “City Investigations” — a private security force hired by the community. He has strict instructions to keep all press and visitors away from the residents of the house who owned one of the cars that was torched on the street.

Emilia Ancona, 65, lives close by that house. She says she woke up at 5:30 a.m. on Friday when she heard loud noises and caught a whiff of what she thought smelled like “burning electricity.” She says she was shocked that such a violent incident could take place so close to where she lived. “Is this in my own backyard now?” she said. “Am I living in Israel?

“My daughter said to me ‘Mom, they could put a bomb in my car, and I’m driving with my children’ she said. “I’m very, very scared”

Her companion, Miriam Rhine, 68, added “Who’s going to protect us?”

Ancona says the community is taking some steps to protect itself. “We have a town hall meeting at our local synagogue tonight to discuss Friday’s incident.” City Investigations, she added, offered assurances in extra vigilance in the coming days. “But I would like to know, how come they didn’t notice something was going on that day?” she said. “They go up and down my block all the time, they didn’t see any guys or kids doing anything on this road? ”

City Investigations declined to comment on the incident.

A spokesperson for the New York Police Department said the incident is being characterized as a hate crime and is currently being investigated by the hate crimes unit.  He said that while there are no leads currently, he encourages the residents of the neighborhood to be on the look out for suspicious activities and report them immediately to the NYPD. The spokesperson said the police were not coordinating with City Investigations and denied knowledge of their activity. He added that NYPD details had been increased in the area to address the residents’ concerns.

By Michael Keller

A member of the anti-semitic Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, is sprayed with a beverage from the crowd of predominately Orthodox Jewish protesters Monday outside the Chaim Berlin Yeshiva in Midwood, Brooklyn. (The Brooklyn Ink/Michael Keller)

Fresh from its appearance before the U.S. Supreme Court last week, the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas brought its signature brand of protest to Brooklyn yesterday where it encounters opponents of its anti-Jewish and anti-gay rhetoric.

The church, which triggered a national debate around the limits of free speech after their widely vilified protest at a Marine’s funeral brought them before the U.S. Supreme Court held rallies Monday in front of Jewish schools and synagogues in Brooklyn and a gay rights center in Manhattan. Protesters prepared for them along the way.

The protestors arrived early to the Chaim Berlin Yeshiva on 1310 Ave. I in Brooklyn. Police set up barricades for both groups: the church members, and a group of roughly 75 to 100 Orthodox Jewish and non-Jewish residents of the area.

Jeff Garret, an Orthodox resident who was giving self-defense advice before the protest, said that it was important “to show that Jews came and that this won’t happen again. As compared to World War II when not enough Jews did things.”

Only four church members were on hand. They carried signs reading “Jews Killed Jesus,” “God Hates Israel,” and “God is your enemy.” One church member wore a bloody American flag and the flag of Israel around her waist, carrying a sign that read, “Thank God for Dead Soldiers.”

The church members sang songs that were inaudible under the chants of “Nazi Scum Will Die.”  When asked if the church identified itself with the Nazi party, one member replied, “We are not a political organization.” He wore a “Dunder Mifflin” T-shirt and carried two signs that read “Your Rabbi is a Whore” and “144k Jews Will Repent,” a reference to a verse in the Book of Revelation.

New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who represents the largely Orthodox neighborhood of Borough Park, also protested earlier in the day outside the Chabad Lubavitch of Kensington, a Jewish center and synagogue on Ocean Parkway. At that protest, he broke through the police barricade and attempted to grab the signs held by one protester, Shirley Phelps-Roper, daughter of Fred Phelps, the church’s founder. When “people carry signs into your community like ‘Your Rabbi is a Whore,’ you don’t close your eyes,” he said later in the day at the protest on Avenue I. A woman who asked to be identified only as Stefanie and who came from her home in Sheepshead Bay spoke emotionally at the end of the protest. “They have no decency these people,” she said, “I’m a Christian and I can’t stand it. It’s not embarrassing; it brings shame.”

The protesters, however, were not a unified group. Binyamin Jolkovsky, publisher of the Jewish World Review, an online Jewish magazine, thinks that such a vocal protest “embarrasses the Orthodox Jewish community by lowering it down to the level of the people protesting.” He came to the protest to spread his point of view, he added, saying that the church “messed up their research. The Orthodox Jewish community is generally pro-life, pro-family, and in favor of God in the public square,” he said, much like religious Christian communities.

These ideological similarities, however, did nothing to assuage the anger of the protesters. The crowd chanted “Go To Hell” and other slogans and consistently heckled the church members during the half-hour protest. One protester held up a Jewish book saying, “This is the Bible,” while another draped himself in the Israeli flag. One protester threw a beverage onto a church member and a group of Orthodox teenagers threw a plastic bottle. The sizable police force on hand was quick to respond.

At the end of the protest, the four church members got in to the red mini-van that had dropped them off. As the car tried to make its way through the crowd of people surrounding it, one protester hit the hood of their car with an unidentified object, leaving a sizable dent.

Protesters ran after the car as it left heading West on Avenue I. One mini-van carrying at least three Orthodox protesters drove down the avenue with its side door still open while a fourth person jumped in. The car went off following the church members’ car.

Jenny and Ifthikar smile before their huppah ceremony. Jenny is from Florida and Ifthikar is from Pakistan. (Photo courtesy of Storybook Simchas Photography)

By Michael Keller

At her wedding table, Jenny turns to her new husband Ifthikar and says to him, “I don’t know how I lived for 43 years without you.” Jenny looks through the veil of a traditional Jewish bride. Ifthikar smiles and says something too softly to hear in his Pakistani accent. They were married in their friend’s living room in an Orthodox Jewish ceremony.

On the fireplace, portraits of famous rabbis in beards and black hats are arranged like family photos. In preparation for the event, women have placed chocolates in the shape of swans on the table. An older woman asks the singer of the band if he too would be interested in meeting a nice Jewish girl to marry. She may happen to know someone.

Jenny and Ifthikar did not simply meet at an Orthodox wedding, however. “When I first met him,” Jenny told me a few weeks ago, “I set his ring tone to this shrill noise so I wouldn’t answer because I was dating a rabbi. He would call every night, though. I called him ‘Itchy’ because he got under my skin.” “I knew he was the one for me,” she says.

Jenny moved to Brooklyn a little under a year ago from Florida after slowly becoming more religious over the past ten years. Ifthikar, or Yitzi as Jenny refers to him as, was born in Pakistan to a Syrian Jewish mother and first moved to America 33 years ago. They share a storefront on the section of Coney Island Ave. known as Little Pakistan out of which Jenny publishes a weekly newsmagazine for Orthodox women and Ifthikar runs a car service. And oh right, they are also both attorneys. They met when Jenny was selling ad space for her magazine.

Their businesses serve both the Jewish and the Pakistani residents of Midwood. To hear Jenny explain it, the arrangement sounds natural. “Muslims pray roughly the same number of times a day as we do,” she says. “They don’t eat pork. Women cover their hair. They wear a different scarf but it’s the same idea.”

If you ask shopkeepers along Coney Island Avenue how business is doing they will say that since 9/11 and since the arrest of the man who tried to bomb Times Square, business is not so good. Ask Jenny about the Orthodox and she will tell you about the two times this month that she has been verbally assaulted about her faith. But if she tells you this story she will laugh at the end and proudly say how Ifthikar chased one of the men out of the store.

“We need to defend each other,” she says, “and forget about this little scrap of land on the other side of the world.”

During the wedding ceremony I and three other men hold up the corners of the huppah, a prayer shawl that is held above the couple. Underneath the huppah are the bride, groom, rabbi, two witnesses, and several women. No one in the room is sitting. They crowd behind and to the sides of the rabbi as close as they can get.

A wedding is beautiful, the rabbi says, because the space below the huppah is filled by the divine presence at the moment of union. And if you combine and rearrange the letters in Jenny’s and Ifthikar’s Hebrew names, he says, you get the Hebrew word for “whole.”

After the ceremony the men dance in one room and the women in the next. Orthodox men take Ifthikar by the arm and by the hand and they dance around him in concentric circles. They grab his arms and form chains. They pile their yarmulkes on his head like school boys teasing a friend.

It is a mitzvah, a good deed, to make the bride and groom smile on his wedding day. They sit Ifthikar and Jenny down in a chair and pretend to polish their shoes with their ties, bringing them water to rehydrate, trying to make them smile.

But before the men and women are led off to separate rooms they are together under the huppah crowded with their guests. Behind the folds of her dress, Jenny and Ifthikar are holding hands.

In a small brick house in Midwood, the blinds are shut but the lights are on. A long, black umbrella leans against the closed door and a reporter waits in a car outside. Inside, the Hakimisefat family meets with their lawyer.

Police charged Eric Hakimisefat, 16, with criminally negligent homicide, reckless driving, and operating a vehicle out of class, police said, following a fatal car accident yesterday that killed his 13-year old passenger, Sarah Erdan. Hakimisefat was travelling at twice the speed limit when he lost control of his vehicle, sideswiping a tree and demolishing the brick porch at 1620 E. 23 St. The latter charge follows since his junior driver’s permit requires that a parent or guardian be present if he is driving.

Today it is raining in fits and starts in Brooklyn. Cars slow down to see the wrecked porch, others honk when they do. A sign on the mailbox reads “Please put my mail in mailbox of 1618” because access to the owner’s door is covered in rubble.

A newscaster records a tease in front of the home for the 5 o’clock news and asks a group of three teenagers if they have a photo of the deceased or of anyone else involved in the crash. The three teenagers are friends of Erdan’s Orthodox Jewish family. They say they do not have any photos and the newsman leaves with his cameraman.

The wind bites and makes the rain come at you sideways. Neighbors close their doors saying “I don’t know anything about the crash. I swear.” Others say that the Hakimisefats are a nice, quiet family.

A woman dressed in black emerges from the Hakimisefat house. Her lips are pursed and her hands motion that she does not want to talk. Another spat of rain falls as the reporters wait outside.

Sarah Erdan was buried today in accordance with Jewish custom.  Jews mourn by sitting shiva – a seven day process starting the day of the burial. Observant Jews follow a series of customs such as wearing a torn garment covering the heart and remaining at home during the full seven days where friends and neighbors visit them. They recite the Mourner’s Kaddish – a prayer praising God, reminding the bereaved not to lose their faith. They are allowed to read the Book of Job.

Hakimisefat’s lawyer leaves the small brick house and picks up his umbrella from beside the door. He is tall with a long face. The family doesn’t have anything to say, he says, “maybe tomorrow.”