School Board elections: A highly qualified candidate got the most votes. That’s a healthy sign for the community. [Updated]

A Chronicle Editorial.

The Croton-Harmon school district has now reported the provisional vote tallies for the four candidates running for the Board of Education, and the results are clear: Allison Samuels put considerable distance between herself and the other contenders.

Allison Samuels: 1062

Theo Oshiro: 919

Will Begeny: 847

Leslie Pollak: 845

There are many things that could be said about these results, and many things are already being said as we publish this Chronicle Editorial. On social media, especially the village Facebook group “The Croton Point,” some partisans of Theo Oshiro and Will Begeny are still attacking the Samuels-Pollak team on various grounds, just as some have been attacking the two ever since they first announced their candidacies earlier this spring.

The essence of these attacks are allegations that Samuels and Pollak were secret Trump supporters, that they were involved in the Parents Defending Education lawsuit against the district, that they were spreading “misinformation” about the district’s practice and policies, and so forth. Two hours before the candidate forum on May 14 was to begin, school board president Ana Teague and superintendent Stephen Walker posted online an official letter that may well have violated New York ethics laws prohibiting public officials from taking positions on election campaigns using official means of communication.

As recently as the weekend before the election, campaign volunteers for the Oshiro-Begeny team were going around the village telling people that their candidates had to be supported lest the board fall into the hands of Trump supporters. And up to and including the day of the election, partisans were handing out flyers that implied Samuels and Pollak wanted to limit the knowledge of our children (this flyer, see below, also had some odd errors, including the time the polls were open and where the voting was taking place.)

In other campaign literature we saw, it was heavily implied, without evidence, that Samuels and Pollak were against public schools.

All of the statements made above are supported by evidence the Chronicle has collected in its reporting, despite denials by some of the people involved (one Oshiro-Begeny partisan who protested online that these things were not true was herself directly involved in spreading rumors that Samuels and Pollak were opposed to DEI policies.)

And yet… and yet… Despite all of the smears and dirty politics, the voters of the district picked overwhelmingly, as their first choice, a highly qualified candidate, while at the same time giving the fewest votes to her running mate. This suggests that most voters did not fall for the falsehoods, and proved themselves capable of cutting through the nonsense and doing what was best for the district’s children. At such a contentious time in Croton and nationally, that is a very healthy sign.

Let’s get into this further.

Ana Teague and Stephen Walker may have violated New York ethics laws.

In earlier commentary, the Chronicle opined that all four candidates were qualified to be on the board, even if they had paired off into opposing camps. Indeed, the heat, passion, partisanship, and often nastiness of the campaign went far beyond any actual differences between the candidates, and were certainly not justified by such differences as do exist. And yet the campaigning reached an intense level of aggressiveness that brought discredit onto our community. Even the Croton Teachers Association, which endorsed Will and Theo and then basically went to war on their behalf, was guilty of this hyper partisanship.

Why was this necessary?

Allison Samuels, a first time candidate, was probably one of the most qualified contenders who has run for the board in recent history. One look at her CV makes that case.

Samuels has been teaching at Baruch College for more than 20 years. While she teaches adult students and not younger children, she has a long history of studying pedagogical approaches, especially in the business field in which she specializes at the college’s Zicklin School of Business. Her publication list is long and varied. And, as she pointed out herself during the campaign, the students she teaches at Baruch College put the “D” into the term diversity.

On top of that, Samuels has put her own children through Croton-Harmon schools and guided them them through the college admission process—a course that many parents who voted for her are now negotiating with their own kids.

In our view, the district is very lucky to have Samuels on its Board of Education. And Theo Oshiro, also elected, has a long and admirable record of fighting for social justice and for the rights of groups that are often discriminated against.

Of course that means that we don’t get to have some other candidates who may well have done an excellent job had they been elected. Will Begeny’s record of advocating for inclusion and understanding of LGBTQIA+ students was an important positive qualification for his being elected. He can continue to serve those functions in our community in other ways, including as a leader of Croton Pride.

As for Leslie Pollak, who got the least number of votes while her running mate got the most, we will let her speak for herself. She wrote on her campaign Facebook page:

“As predicted, all my past work in demanding accountability and putting students first which lent itself to a concerted school wide campaign against me, had the predicted outcome. It was a surprisingly close race considering the dirty politics, but I am thrilled that my running mate Allison Samuels was elected as the favorite. She deserves it. I feel so happy knowing that she will be a part of that BOE. I will continue to do what I have done for 15 years to help support Croton Kids and their families. A special thanks to my “cabinet” friends who supported and drove our campaign. You made this all possible and more importantly opened up district wide conversations.”

As with Will, we have hardly heard the last from Leslie, who routinely shows up to school board meetings to speak her mind.

To return to the wisdom of the voters: It appears that a significant number of parents and other residents in our district were able to rise above the tribal politics that often characterize the Croton community, and make decisions based on merit, even if it meant splitting the two tickets rather than voting “party lines.” These tribal politics often intersect with what we see as the machine politics of Croton Democrats, who are now facing a second challenge by Voice of Croton this coming November.

As we wrote in an earlier commentary, the unfortunately severe partisanship of the election campaign…

“…smack[s] of a form of tribal politics, in which certain individuals and groups in our community have formed power blocks that go beyond the actual principles and positions of the two “sides” in this campaign. These tribes are bound by social ties, a certain history among their members, and—always a feature of tribalism—a passionate conviction that only members of the tribes are on the right path and possess the true wisdom.”

In this election, this attitude has turned out to be pretty silly in the end. Samuels and Pollak, even if they had both won, would have been only two out of seven board members, joining colleagues who have a solid track record of supporting DEI and other inclusive policies (even if they have not managed to actually adopt such polices after a full year of committee meetings and debate.)

We are not naive, and we know that some district voters have convinced themselves that Samuels and Pollak have led a Trojan Horse of Trump supporters into the gates of our fair community, dropping off a gifted Baruch College instructor to do Trump’s dastardly dirty work. The reality, of course, is that we have elected a highly qualified candidate whose presence on the board may prove to represent the kind of diversity so many have been demanding all this time.

May 22 afterthoughts:

Interesting that Allison and Leslie got a total of 1,907 votes between them and Theo and Will got a total of 1,766 votes between them. That would suggest that the district community as a whole leaned towards A and L by a modest but still statistically significant margin, despite the political dominance of our community by liberal Democrats. That implies a certain degree of disaffection with the status quo. (Note that Will only got two more votes than Leslie did.)

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