Small Great Neck academy wins big in contest

For tiny Silverstein Hebrew Academy in Great Neck, winning a half-million dollars in a national competition that relied on garnering thousands of votes was a "miracle," the school's director said Tuesday.

The 150-student school, which goes from preschool through fifth grade, amassed 140,000 votes on Facebook, winning, along with 19 other schools nationwide, $500,000 from Kohl's department stores. The winners took part in a contest that asked parents, teachers and supporters to share on the Kohl's Facebook page what their schools would do with a half-million dollars.

For Silverstein, that question was easy: The school, founded as a preschool in 1998, needs a kitchen and a gym as it has grown to include older children. Construction had been halted because of a lack of funds, said the school's director, Rabbi Dovid Ezagui.

"We have no kitchen in our school whatsoever," Ezagui said, and children currently play in a classroom.

Even though the competition ended early last month and Kohl's announced winners last week, Ezagui Tuesday seemed still in shock about how his small school competed with 100,000 others - many that are much bigger.

"That's really the miracle behind the whole story," Ezagui said. "It's the little engine that could."

Silverstein officials decided to get involved after getting an e-mail from another school asking for votes, Ezagui said. He knew that the small school would have to work extra hard to compete. When the seven-week competition began in July, did Ezagui think they stood a chance? "Deep-down, gut feeling, no," he admitted. "Not if you look at the numbers." But it was worth a shot, he said.

So staff members brainstormed a strategy: Getting older siblings to solicit votes. "Who's on Facebook," Ezagui said. "It's the young guys."

Teams of teens armed with laptops connected to the Internet spent many summer days in Manhattan asking people to help the school win some money.

For a while, the school was in first place, Ezagui said. When the voting ended Sept. 3, a Friday, students and staff waited in suspense. As Orthodox Jews who refrain from using electricity during the sabbath, they were unable to garner any last-minute votes or check on how they were doing, Ezagui recalled.

"It's amazing how out of all the schools in America, our school won," said fifth-grader Aryeh Hajibay, 10.