Ideas 

Why I'm Running

Like many others in our community I have been distraught about the state of our country. We are seeing the dismantling of institutions meant to protect people, attacks on our climate, and threats to democracy itself. This is also a hard time to know what to tell our children. The other day my daughter asked me to stop reading a news article out loud to my wife because “it was too scary.” 

She’s right. Our world is scary these days and it is hard to know what to do. But I believe that the answer lies in our children and how we teach them to exist as people in this world. Are we showing our children how to stand up to injustice at the same time as we are teaching them the latest scientific developments? Are we providing the best exposure to technology and, at the same time, challenging our students to think about technology as a tool to do good? 

I also believe that working to improve our neighborhoods, our local policies, our local systems has a reverberating effect and will ultimately help restore our democracy. 

This is why I am running again for the Croton-Harmon Board of Education. 

I believe in the importance of academic excellence. And I believe that academic excellence is achieved through a holistic approach that combines rigorous academics and social-emotional supports, co-curricular activities and an equitable perspective that meets kids where they’re at. 

I believe in community and solidarity. I did not understand the important truth of the saying “it takes a village” until I had kids. Croton is a wonderful village full of caring and skilled people. We must do more to catalyze that wonderful energy to serve our students and we must do more to show our kids the beauty of other places, cultures, and languages and how to meaningfully connect to them. 

I believe in our educators. Every day I see how our Croton schools have positively impacted our students. I believe that our educators, aides, maintenance and clerical staff and district leaders need our collective support to succeed. And I believe that our system needs to be constantly challenged to do even more because they have risen to the challenge time and time again. 

I am a father of two kids in our school system. I am a social justice leader. And I am someone who believes that our children will lead the way. 

I hope I earn your vote on May 20th. 

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Vision for Education

There’s a lot of talk about academic rigor in Croton these days, about “excellence” as a means to get kids into elite colleges. We all want our kids to do better than we did, right?

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The problem is that college admissions look nothing like they did a generation ago. MIT used to accept around 25% of applicants. Today? Just 4%. Even in districts with seemingly limitless resources like Greenwich, CT, students have about a 9% shot at an elite school. 

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Good grades and stacked transcripts are simply no longer enough. Colleges want students who show real passion—students who’ve done something meaningful over time, not just checked a bunch of boxes. These are the students they want on campus.

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A former admissions officer at both Harvard and Stanford put it this way: rigor still matters, but what sets students apart is authentic drive. The essay, the recommendations, the work they’ve done in their community—that’s where the story comes alive. It’s not about polishing a resume junior year. It’s about discovering what excites you early, and running with it.

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The academic pressure mill approach that we see all over Westchester is not only outdated and irrelevant—it’s harmful. What we should be focusing on is this: What are our schools doing to help our kids find that spark? From there, are they giving them the skills and opportunities to enrich that passion. And this is an approach that helps all kids. We can always do better at communicating, measuring, and progressing our  strategy for academic excellence. Our high school concentration pilot program and electives like bioethics are steps in the right direction. But we need to keep pushing for a system that values curiosity and creativity in service of things our kids can feel great about. And it needs to work hand-in-hand with social-emotional support and accelerated learning opportunities in all three schools. 

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With help from teachers, staff, and local partners (and some constructive nudging from our counseling staff), we can create opportunities for advanced, hands-on learning that meets kids where they’re at and helps cultivate that passion. Organic chemistry, strategic management, and statistics are all relevant and viable for students who want to progress environmental advocacy, for example. And even at the elementary school level, this might involve age-appropriate introductions to ecosystems, critical history, or engineering.

There’s foundational learning in these areas that we can’t discount, but it’ll be better realized, and turned into lifelong passions, if we invest in programs that students care about. This is the kind of excellence we can aspire to in Croton. We don’t need to create more arbitrary academic pressure—we can follow the science and build something so much better. 

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More on Academics 

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As parents with young children at CET and PVC, we are deeply invested in the future of Croton-Harmon schools — not just for our kids, but for every child in our community. We are proud of our district’s commitment to a more student-centered, whole-child approach. Our teachers are doing remarkable work, and you can feel the difference when you walk into our classrooms, indoors and outside in the community (as we see more and more at PVC): more joy, more curiosity, more real-world learning.

But if we want to make this vision sustainable — and stronger — we need to make sure we’re measuring what truly matters.

Too often, school success gets reduced to a narrow set of test scores or surface-level comparisons to neighboring districts. You tend to see this sort of thing on places like Facebook and we can feel all the educators out there cringe (these are painfully superficial ways to assess a district). 

But real progress — the kind that lasts — demands deeper, more meaningful measures. We need to assess how well we are living up to our own vision, not someone else’s checklist. That means looking beyond rote tests to track critical skills like collaboration, creativity, resilience, and belonging — the very foundations of lifelong success.

Fortunately, we don’t have to start from scratch. 

• Like Chappaqua, we rolled out school climate surveys starting in 2023, but we need to expand these to better represent student, teacher, and parent experiences, aligned to national social-emotional learning frameworks, to strengthen school culture and ensure every student feels seen and supported. And we can use short term pulse studies to identify urgent issues, or identify the value of specific programs.
   

• Like Bronxville, our approach to open AP enrollment is earning national recognition. As a community we can also benefit from greater transparency into student progress across race/ethnicity, disability, and English learner status, so that we can consistently improve and ensure access and opportunity is equitable.

But there’s a lot more we can do. Like Scarsdale, we could report publicly on how many students are participating in extracurriculars, internships, and capstone projects, recognizing that engagement beyond academics is a core driver of success. But we can also expand our measures to reflect a wider range of students who bring their smarts and passion to critical trades, youth employment opportunities, and supplemental training and experiences with Croton organizations. 

The research backs this up. Models like College Readiness Indicator Systems (CRIS) track academic interventions early across grade levels. New York’s Inquiry-Based Learner Profiles allow schools to assess student growth in interdisciplinary skills — research, collaboration, responsible action — that are critical for the future. Validated self-assessment tools like the Interdisciplinary Understanding Questionnaire (IUQ) can offer deep insights into how students are developing adaptability and critical reflection.

Our school district is doing good work and we should challenge our district to be even more innovative in all that our school does, how they measure it all, and how they present all of that crucial information to the Croton community.  As we lead in redefining academic excellence among our peers, we should track not just test performance, but interdisciplinary project learning, student leadership, school climate, enrichment participation, physical wellness, and student agency. Imagine regularly celebrating how many students are leading clubs, how many are defending capstone projects publicly, how many are gaining access to advanced coursework, and how many feel truly safe and supported in our schools.

As candidates for the Board of Education, our focus is on making sure we’re not just aiming high — but giving ourselves the tools to know whether we’re getting there, and how we can keep improving for every student, every year. With young kids in the system, we’re in it for the long haul!

Will Begeny, BegenyforBOE.com

Theo Oshiro, TheoforBOE.com

Candidates for Trustee, Croton-Harmon Board of Education

Athletics
 

Physical education and sports are key to the whole-child approach that we are passionate about. Will is a soccer coach and candidate for the Croton-Harmon Board of Education and has spent countless hours on the sidelines encouraging kids of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds. Theo uses somatics and athletics in his personal life as a triathlete, as a father of two girls who play soccer and softball and as an advocate who pushes for opportunities for movement for low-income youth all over New York State. 

We’ve seen firsthand what happens when children are given the opportunity to move, play, and connect: they gain confidence, build resilience, and learn to work together. 

These moments may seem small—but they are central to student success. 

The science is clear on this, too. When we talk about a “whole child education,” this is what we’re talking about: a research-backed approach that prioritizes the physical, social, and emotional well-being of children so that it enables and bolsters academic growth. A meta-analysis of hundreds of studies (over 1 million students) shows this pretty clearly—students in social-emotional learning (SEL) programs outperform peers on grades and standardized tests; one review found SEL participants scored 11 percentile points higher academically than non-SEL controls.

Physical education and sports play a critical role in this equation. According to the CDC, students who participate in regular physical activity have improved attention, faster cognitive processing, and better academic performance. Kids who are physically active are also less likely to struggle with anxiety and depression—challenges that are on the rise nationally and locally.

But access to high-quality physical education and extracurricular activities is still too often shaped by background, income, and ability. We’ve worked with kids who’ve faced barriers in school or life that made them question their place on any team. We’ve seen how powerful it is when those kids are not only welcomed but celebrated for their personal victories along the way. It changes how they see themselves and makes growth possible.

That’s the vision we want to bring to the Croton-Harmon Board of Education.

Every child deserves access to experiences that support their full development—not just those who can afford club sports or test into advanced programs. We want to help shape a school system where physical health, emotional safety, and academic excellence go hand in hand. Because when we invest in the whole child, we lift up every child.

If that’s what you’d like to see in the schools, I hope you’ll vote for us on May 20.

Go Tigers