On April 27, the five candidates vying for three seats on the Croton-Harmon Board of Education published a joint letter in the Chronicle, soon after also published in The Gazette, calling upon the community to avoid the negativity that often marked last year’s BoE election campaign. As the candidates put it:
“What happened in 2025 was discouraging. Rumors spread, with neighbors saying things about neighbors that had nothing to do with our schools or district governance or the future of our kids. Many people came away from that experience feeling worn out and a little less trusting of each other. We don’t want that to happen again.”
The candidates called upon the community to put on display the better angels of our natures:
“Croton is full of smart, passionate people who are more than capable of weighing competing ideas and making up their own minds without resorting to negativity. That’s the community we’re running to serve and you all deserve an election that is vigorous, honest, and respectful.”
Up until yesterday, we had seen little evidence that anyone in the community, and certainly not the candidates themselves, had failed to heed this call for civility in the campaign. The one or two incidents that were reported to us appeared to be self-contained and outlandish enough that they were not likely to influence the outcome of the election.
But yesterday we began to hear from local parents who were upset about a mailer from the Croton Teachers Association (CTA) that had landed in their mailboxes. The mailer, which we have reproduced the front and back of above, clearly states that voters should support the three incumbents because they are the candidates who will “fight for Croton public schools” and “fight for strong public schools.”
Around the same time, an Instagram post from the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT), with which the CTA is affiliated, appeared which made a similar pitch for the three incumbents:
In this case the NYSUT implied that the three incumbents were not only the ones who were in favor of public education, but also the “pro-student” candidates, despite the lack of any evidence that the two challengers are anti-student in any way.
The problem with these campaign materials, as parents pointed out to us and which our own reporting supports, is that there is no discernible difference between the three incumbents and the two challengers in terms of their support for, and dedication to, public schools.
The only possible evidence that the CTA and NYSUT might be able to cite is a full disclosure that challenger Elizabeth “Betsy” Laird made on her campaign Website when she first launched her campaign. At that time Laird made the following statement:
“I want to be honest with you about something personal. Last year, my husband and I made the difficult decision to move our son to a school outside of the District. Before moving our son, we worked hard to advocate with the District on what was happening but felt disempowered and ignored. It was one of the hardest choices we have made as parents, because we believe in public education— but we knew it was what he needed at the time. We are excited for him and our rising kindergartner to be back at CET next year, and we are committed to advocating for the continued strengthening of our schools, whether I am elected or not.”
The statement makes clear that Laird and her husband were unable to resolve a situation with the district, only very reluctantly took their child out of the public school, and are returning him to our district schools this coming fall. None of the parents we have talked to consider this as evidence that Laird does not now or will not in the future “fight” for public school education for our children. Indeed, there appears to be wide acceptance, including among her fellow candidates, that just the opposite is true.
The day after the five candidates first published their letter, the CTA came out with an endorsement of the three incumbents. As we wrote at the time, this came as little surprise to most parents and other observers of the local school scene. Historically, the union much more often than not endorses the incumbents on the Board of Education over the challengers.
Such was effectively the case last year as well, when the CTA endorsed incumbent Theo Oshiro and first time candidate Will Begeny—who was widely seen as the heir apparent to retiring trustee Josh Diamond—over the two clear challengers, Allison Samuels and Leslie Pollak.
But there is a striking similarity in last year’s CTA endorsements and this year’s: In 2025, the union made exactly the same claim, that its endorsees were the candidates who would protect and defend public schools.
Last year, as well as this year, the CTA presented no evidence that the challengers—who had put their own children through our district schools—were any less dedicated to our public schools than their favored candidates. In fact, false claims that Samuels and Pollak were part of a secret MAGA-inspired attack on public schools, funded by organizations such as Parents Defending Education (PDE, now known as Defending Education) were a key part of the smear tactics that our current candidates have urged the community to avoid.
The fact that the CTA has used almost exactly the same campaign slogans, even though this year’s candidates and some of the issues are different, has led some parents to suspect—as a number of them have told the Chronicle privately—that the union is following a kind of rote endorsement policy, rather than taking the specific issues seriously.
The three current incumbents have not, as far as we aware, tried to use the CTA endorsements in their campaign literature nor in their public statements in support of their candidacies, for example at the two candidates forums that have been held to help voters make their decisions.
We have asked the current CTA president, Ilana McConville, a social studies teacher at Croton-Harmon High School, to comment on the concerns raised with us about the mailers, but we have not yet heard back from her despite repeated queries. We specifically asked her if there was any evidence that the incumbents were more dedicated to public schools than the challengers. If we do eventually hear back, we will update this report accordingly.
The mailers are not the only issue that parents have raised with us concerning the CTA endorsement of the three incumbents. We have also been told that some teachers are cold calling parents and asking questions about whether they plan to vote and who they plan to vote for. Some parents have felt very uncomfortable about the possibility that they will be contacted by one of their childrens’ teachers and asked these kinds of questions, or outright urged to vote for a candidate whom they do not support.
Last year some teachers actually went door to door campaigning for the CTA endorsed candidates, and parents also received a barrage of robocalls shortly before voting day. As far as we have been able to determine so far neither tactic is much in evidence this year, although we are monitoring the situation as the May 19 election day approaches.
Commentary: We have seen nothing during our reporting on the CTA’s campaign activities to suggest that our local teachers are anything other than passionate educators and dedicated advocates for the best interests of our children. And teachers’ unions have the legal right to endorse candidates and to campaign for them, although in small communities such as ours the exercise of that right can be problematic. Sometimes true enemies of public education run for school boards, and it is necessary and vital for educators to speak out against them when they do.
But that is clearly not the case in our school district nor in this year’s election. Just because unions have the right to endorse and campaign does not mean that they are always right to exercise it—especially if the reasons they give for supporting particular candidates are false or misleading. In the view of many local parents, the CTA has crossed the ethical line in its campaign tactics.
We agree that the community would be better served if our teachers, too, sought out the better angels of their own natures.
Update: There has been a lot of response to this post already, all of it so far agreeing with the concerns raised, although we would be happy to hear from defenders of the CTA’s campaign tactics. One parent shared with us a text they had received from a CTA member:
“Hi ——-! This is Lauren from the Croton Teachers' Association. We are reaching out regarding the upcoming School Budget and Board of Education Election. We are supporting Anamika Bhatnagar, Sarah Carrier, and Neal Haber because they are dedicated, student-centered, community-minded candidates.
Can we count on you to vote for them and YES on the school budget, Tuesday, May 19th? Reply STOP to opt out.”
Another parent pointed out that the Mahopac teachers association had done an Instagram post almost identical to that used by NYSUT to endorse the Croton-Harmon incumbents:
It appears that a lot of this is being centrally coordinated, presumably at the NYSUT level. We will leave it to others for the moment to draw some of these connections.
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I'm glad this was published. These endorsements by the CTA (the teacher's union) are highly unethical. The Board of Education is tasked with representing not only teachers but also students, parents, and taxpayers. The CTA represents ONLY the teachers. The conflict of interest here is blatant. It's like a vendor endorsing, and helping elect, the people who approve their contracts.
I care deeply about teachers and want them to be supported. But many teachers I know strongly disagree with their unions' endorsements because they saw the union as pushing back on teacher accountability. They are great teachers and find it demoralizing when bad teachers are not held to high standards, and the teachers union is often to blame for the low standards.
Please voters: step back and look at these endorsements critically. The endorsed candidates may be fine for other reasons, but the last thing you should do is vote for them based on the CTA endorsement.
What concerns me most is the implication that anyone questioning the current direction of the district is somehow against public schools or against students.
A healthy school district should welcome questions about academic performance, transparency, accountability, curriculum, technology use, and whether students are being challenged and supported appropriately.