State Senator Shelley B. Mayer's Statement on Supreme Court Rulings
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"I am profoundly disappointed, deeply worried, and entirely unsurprised by the Trump-appointed Supreme Court's recent decisions in Trump v. CASA, Medina v. Planned Parenthood Southern Atlantic, and Mahmoud v. Taylor. These decisions reflect a dangerous disregard for the rule of law and civil rights of Americans, and will have serious consequences for our democracy.
"Most troubling, in Trump v. CASA, the Supreme Court took an axe to nationwide injunctions –– which have been a key tool for litigants trying to block illegal and unconstitutional acts by the Trump Administration. Birth right citizenship is unambiguously provided for in the 14th amendment of the US Constitution, but the Court’s decision will allow the Trump Administration’s executive order denying citizenship to certain people born in the US to temporarily go into effect in parts of the country, while litigation continues. This decision will only embolden the Trump Administration to continue taking executive action, without regard for our laws and Constitution.
"The Court’s decision in Medina v. Planned Parenthood only furthers the assault on reproductive healthcare and rights across the country right now. Millions of Americans, particularly low-income women of color, may lose access to vital and potentially lifesaving health care through Planned Parenthood as a result. As we predicted after Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, restriction of reproductive care did not, and will not, stop at abortion care. This is not about reproductive healthcare. This is about controlling women and low-income individuals, and denying them their basic rights and dignity."
"And in Mahmoud v. Taylor, the Court has allowed parents to withdraw their children from class when the reading lessons include LGBTQ+ characters. This ruling undermines the role of public education, to educate students about our diverse society and not to favor any particular faith. It is important for children to be exposed to people of varying beliefs, orientations, and backgrounds to foster empathy and respect for all individuals. I am deeply worried about the implications of this decision for New York State schools which aim to provide an inclusive education to all children.
"Americans should be alarmed by the dangerous and irresponsible disregard for justice shown again and again by the highest court. These three cases will have severe and real effects on the everyday lives of Americans. As we have done in the past, New York will stand by those being disenfranchised. We will not remain silent in the face of injustice."
SHS Principal Ken Bonamo Offers Thoughts on AI in Education at 2025 Graduation
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Andrea O'Gorman and Ken BonamoHere are remarks delivered by Scarsdale High School Principal Kenneth Bonamo at the graduation of the Class of 2025 on June 20, 2025.
Good evening President Hahn, Superintendent Patrick, fellow members of the faculty, parents and friends, and most especially the members of the Class of 2025.
Today is a special day that marks the culmination of your childhood education and the beginning of college and adulthood for you.
Your families and your teachers are filled with a deep hope that we have given you all that you need to succeed in these next stages, and we are filled with anticipation at what the future holds for you.
The resources that the Scarsdale community devotes to education have allowed us to provide you with an enriching and engaging experience that has developed in you a depth of critical and creative thinking, an appreciation for global interdependence, and a genuine love of learning.
These goals have guided our work as a faculty in designing the courses and learning activities that you’ve enjoyed during the past four years. The vantage point of graduation allows you to appreciate the impact of your work in developing your academic skills and fostering your growth as individuals.
This accomplishment also represents the hard work you have put into getting here.
You have excelled in athletic and extracurricular activities, developing the habits of mind of the different disciplines while 
nurturing your interests and relationships outside of the classroom.
And so you have completed your coursework and your exams and your Senior Options and have earned a seat at this very ceremony.
This is not by accident but instead through commitment and dedication to your goals.
It is so good to see all of you here to celebrate this moment that is filled with meaning, as it represents both the accomplishment of having graduated and the commencement of your adult lives. Let us pause here for a moment to appreciate the beauty and significance of this moment.
As we celebrate this milestone with you this evening and in light of what you have accomplished, we also look to the future, not only for its possibilities and opportunities but also for its questions and unknowns. In that vein, I ask you to think with me in the next few minutes about quite a daunting challenge we all face, that of artificial intelligence. AI presents incredible opportunities and innumerable questions to us as individuals and as a society.
I offer for your consideration a parallel between artificial intelligence and nuclear energy. The potential of nuclear energy for good has been overshadowed by its potential for destruction on a massive scale, and its critics invoke historical examples of that destruction to nullify any positive impacts it might have for society in terms of energy production.
In a similar way, the critics of AI point to its environmental impact and theft of intellectual property, to say nothing of its inaccuracies, to draw our attention away from its potential benefits, such as analyzing medical test results to find indicators of disease or writing computer code that allows programmers to tackle more complicated tasks.
I am sure that many of your teachers have been urging you to resist using artificial intelligence so that you have the full benefit of learning the knowledge and skills we aim to teach you. But it is not only because of the learning opportunities you might miss.
Our desire to keep AI separate from your education is not only because of a specific assignment or task but also because when you delegate the tasks of reading and writing and even thinking to a machine or an algorithm, you miss the opportunity to develop the judgment and the emotional intelligence that are the additional benefits of academic inquiry and intellectual engagement.
College professors and high-school teachers are struggling with serious questions about how to proceed, how to design educational experiences and learning objectives and assessment tools in the age of AI. How do we get students to read deeply and write competently and reason clearly with the distraction and easy escape of technology? If AI can produce a decent or better quality literary response essay or even now a fully cited research paper, are those tasks still valid today as worthy of our time for you to write them and for us to grade them? If they are, how do we protect them from being invalidated by AI—and is that even possible? And if they aren’t worth our effort, then what is?
Intellectual engagement with history, for example, requires perspective-taking of an unfamiliar person from an unfamiliar time and place, and that experience of developing empathy and understanding enhances our ability to engage with others in our lives. Depriving people of education has been the hallmark of repression in the past, and I worry what might happen if we end up depriving ourselves of education because of the temptation this technology presents. Education bestows on us the gift of the ability to think which then gives us the freedom and the power to lead independent and productive lives.
So the decision about this will be left to all of us, and you as the next generation, and just as with nuclear energy or plastics or automobiles or any other human product where both the costs and the benefits are significant and significantly at odds with each other, the answers are unlikely to be unequivocal, unchallenged, or final. This new product is with us, and we must make sense of it. The decision is ours—and will increasingly become yours to make.
And so we know that change is the only constant. How ironic that is, but it is also quite true. To make sense of all this—the world around you at the moment of your high-school graduation—I urge you to find a through line of humanity, and perhaps to begin by thinking of non sibi, of selfless service. Think about your educational journey here in Scarsdale. For some of you it started 13 years ago, or maybe 12, or maybe 7 years ago, or maybe in ninth grade, or maybe this past September.
Think about that journey and think about the time that you or someone you know did a good deed, did something good or nice or thoughtful for you or for someone else. Think of how it made you feel to give someone the gift of your kindness, or to observe someone being kind, or even to be lucky enough to be the recipient of such a gift, and remember that this is what makes us human. Our need for empathy and respect and kindness is universal.
Finally, and in light of that humanity, I also urge you to build a legacy of love.
The key to your success in taking advantage of the many opportunities and meeting the many challenges that lie ahead will be to infuse love into your work, your relationships, and your self-regard.
Love is an active ingredient of our intelligence.
Knowledge is not acquired information like a computer stores data.
Rather, it involves an intentional engagement with whatever the information might be about.
Intelligence requires a dialogue with the world, and a state of flow is when we are fully immersed in the exchange.
Love is what invites us into that connection.
If you look around this field, you see your family and friends who demonstrated love in supporting you.
You see your teachers who loved teaching and guiding you.
And most importantly, you should look at yourselves and love what you see—an intelligent, curious, responsible person, poised to continue learning in order to take on the challenges of life and of our society.
I wish you all a wonderful graduation day and health and happiness in the future. Congratulations to you all!
Resident Clear Cuts 66 Trees, Inundating Neighbors Below
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In perhaps one of the most egregious incidents of tree destruction that we’ve seen, Mohican Trail residents removed 66 trees on a steep slope to accommodate a basketball court.
The clear cutting did more than destroy the view from the homes below. It caused significant erosion and mud slides into the yards, pools and streets.
The surprising fact is that the residents removed the trees with the approval of the Village.
That’s right. Scarsdale Village signed a permit to remove 39 Norway Maples, 22 dead or diseased deciduous trees and 5 native deciduous healthy trees to build a sports court.
Here’s the note on the property record below:
February 27, 2024
“REMOVAL OF 66 TREES CONSISITING OF 39 INVASIVE NORWAY MAPLES, 22 DEAD DISEASED NATIVE DECIDUOUS TREES, AND 5 NATIVE DECIDUOUS TREES WHICH ARE HEALTHY. (REMOVAL LIST ATTACHED) PROPERTY CONTAINS TEN TREES WHICH WERE FLAGGED BY VILLAGE ARBORIST TO BE PRESERVED AND PROTECTED. (PROTECTED LIST ATTACHED) ARBORIST REPORT PROVIDED. FIVE (5) REPLACEMENT TREES REQUIRED FROM GROUP A OR GROUP C OF VILLAGE LIST.”
About the Village Code that allows Norway Maples to be removed without a permit, the neighbor writes, “Norwegian Maples were planted widely in Westchester in the 1700’s to replace the trees that had succumbed to Duthc Elm disease. The trees were hearty, growing tall, and providing a beautiful canopy.”
The residents on Mohican Trail were supposed to plant replacements for some of the downed trees, but instead they have applied for a special use permit to build a 2,200 square foot sports court on the steep slope which a neighbor says will “exacerbate stormwater flooding, environmental degradation and “cause significant harm to the use, enjoyment and value of our property and the properties of neighbors.” The tree permit application has not been closed.
The downhill neighbors has submitted documentation, photos and videos that show water coursing down the slope, spewing mud onto her patio and into her pool. The photos of the flooding of the street are even more dramatic.
Read letters from neighbors here:
(Update) The application to build the sports court at 12 Mohican Trail was approved unanimously by the Scarsdale Zoning Board on June 11, 2025.
In Support of Public Safety Technology
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(This letter was written by Brian Culang)
To the Mayor, Village Board, and Public Safety Officials of Scarsdale:
I am writing to express my unequivocal support for the proposed public safety technology system recently outlined by our town leadership.
This issue is deeply personal for my family. In 2017, our home on Berwick Road was the target of a terrifying home invasion. Three men drove to our residence in a stolen car, forcibly entered our home in the middle of the night, and physically confronted members of my family. It was a chaotic, violent, and traumatic event. By some miracle, and a lot of luck, we were able to fend them off. But they fled, disappearing into the night.
What ultimately brought those men to justice was the use of police technology. The Scarsdale Police Department, leveraging license plate readers and coordination with regional law enforcement, tracked the suspects down, arrested them, and successfully prosecuted them. But I believe with every fiber of my being that if the technology currently under consideration had been in place in 2017, this crime would never have occurred in the first place. It would have stopped them before they even entered our neighborhood.
Any system that helps our law enforcement officers do their jobs more effectively, keeps our neighborhoods safe, and prevents crimes before they happen is something I strongly support. The idea that we would hold back tools that could protect our families because of abstract political rhetoric or misplaced ideological concerns is not just unwise—it’s dangerous.
Let me be blunt: there is no good reason to distrust our local leaders on this issue. These are people we elected, who live here, who raise their kids here, and who have a proven track record of keeping our town one of the safest in the country. To conflate this focused, thoughtful proposal with national debates about immigration, surveillance, or privacy is lunacy. This is not Washington. This is Scarsdale. And we are better than that.
There are a lot of smart, accomplished people in this town. Let’s not do something stupid. Let’s not tie the hands of our police or gamble with the safety of our neighbors based on theoretical fears or cable news narratives. Let’s act like the thoughtful, pragmatic community we claim to be.
I urge the Board to move forward with this proposal without delay. I thank our leaders for their courage and clarity on this issue—and I hope the community will rally around them to do the right thing.
Sincerely,
Brian Culang
Scarsdale, NY
Richard Henry Behr: Architect, Educator, Visionary: April 23, 1942 – May 14, 2025
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Richard Henry Behr, longtime Scarsdale resident and esteemed architect, educator, and design visionary, passed away peacefully in the early morning hours of May 14th. Known to colleagues, students, and friends as Rick, he leaves behind a legacy of transformative architectural work, academic dedication, and a life deeply committed to shaping the built environment with purpose and integrity.
Prior to his retirement, Rick enjoyed more than four decades in architectural practice, culminating in the founding of his firm, Richard Henry Behr Architect, P.C., in 1984. His distinguished career included roles as Chief Architect of the New York State Urban Development Corporation, architect with the renowned firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill International, and consultant in applied physics at MIT with Bolt, Beranek, and Newman.
Rick’s design vision spanned continents and cultures. His portfolio includes such landmark projects as Jim Henson’s Muppets Studios in New York City, the Jeddah Jetport in Saudi Arabia—at the time the largest architectural project in the world—the University in Mecca, and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He also designed numerous custom residential, commercial, and educational buildings throughout New York, Connecticut, Florida, and beyond.
Rick held a Master of Business Administration from New York University (1978) and a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Minnesota (1965), with additional studies at MIT, Columbia, Cornell, the University of Illinois, and Illinois Institute of Technology. As an educator, he served as Adjunct Professor of Historic Preservation and Adaptive Reuse at the Yale Graduate School of Architecture (1971–1989) and at the Pratt School of Architecture (1971–1976). He co-authored Economics of Community Revitalization and Design for the Elderly, exploring architecture’s role in community and social wellbeing.
Rick was predeceased by his beloved wife, Suzanne Behr. He is survived by his children: Heather Panessa and her husband Joseph; Mark Behr and his wife Jennifer Borgen Behr; and Spencer Behr and his wife Karen Behr. He was a proud and devoted grandfather to Ashley Panessa, Paige Panessa, Ethan Behr, Madeline Behr, and Jackson Behr.
Those who knew Rick will remember his formidable intellect, creative vision, and heartfelt generosity, as well as his love of sailing, fly fishing, and golden retrievers. His contributions live on in the built environment, in the students he mentored, in the many communities touched by his work, and in his family—especially the five grandchildren he adored.
