When Andrew Hara attended his first football game against Monsignor Farrell on Sep. 6, he didn’t just blend into the Nugent Stadium crowd — he became part of it.
Wearing a black Rye Athletics sweatshirt, Rye High School’s new principal posed for a disposable-camera snapshot with students. Days later, when one sent him the photo, Hara used it to make his Instagram debut, captioning his first post with school spirit.
“Nice to meet you, Rye High School! Excited, honored, and proud to be a Garnet!” He posted on Sept. 15.
“I’m sitting there in my Rye sweatshirt and I just thought this would be a good inaugural post,” Hara told The Record from his office on a recent Thursday afternoon. “So that was my first post, and from there it kind of took off.”
His Instagram page has become a hub for students — proving that a little social media savvy can go a long way in building community.
With more than 1,100 followers, Hara tends to post in bursts every two to three weeks. While Twitter was his preferred platform at his previous stop, he chose Instagram in Rye.
He found that when kids are home or during their downtime, they’re all scrolling through the app or tapping on stories.
“We do morning announcements over the loudspeaker … but students don’t always listen, that’s just the reality,” he said. “I actually can get the data myself on [Instagram] and I’ve found that it actually hits a larger audience of both students as well as families and even some of my faculty members.”
And it seems to be working.
The feedback has been overwhelming, Hara said, noting students ask to be featured on his page — a sign, in his view, that they’re paying attention.
Photo Alison Rodilosso
In his first year in Rye, the new principal is prioritizing building connections and understanding the community. He has been meeting with parents, faculty, and students to understand their vision for the school. He also is focused on integrating the new International Baccalaureate program and amplifying student voices through a revamped student government as well as initiatives to enhance collaboration and school spirit.
Hara was hired in August 2024, leaving his role in Yonkers as principal of the Barack Obama School. He is taking home a salary of $210,000 annually, according to filings.
The Record spent several hours with Hara, discussing his background and upbringing, while walking the halls of the Parsons Street campus with him.
He grew up on the West Coast and attended a public high school in the Bay Area before enrolling at Tufts University. As a junior at Tufts, he taught a course to incoming freshmen, and spent six weeks researching bilingual education —Spanish and Aymara (a group of South American Indian languages) — in a Chilean school in an indigenous village in the Andes mountains.
“Those experiences and coming from a family of educators — my mother and grandmother were both teachers — I knew that working in schools was something I wanted to do,” said Hara, who now lives in White Plains with his wife, daughter, 17, and son, 3.
His father is Japanese, his mother is a Russian Jew. He speaks Spanish and says he’s in the process of learning Japanese.
His career in education first launched in the Dominican Republic, before he returned to New York City and then Yonkers. Twenty years later, he has concluded that connecting with kids is universal.
“Kids are kids wherever you go, teenagers are teenagers wherever you go, whether that’s Santo Domingo, Boston, the Bronx, Yonkers,” the educator said, before stopping to chat with a handful of students.
“Being in urban education for so long and making that shift … whether it’s in the city or whether it’s in the suburbs, there’s a need for adults who can connect with kids,” he added. “I’ve felt that always was what I would consider a strength” of mine.
Photo Alison Rodilosso
The principal also takes pride in his commitment to transparency, and believes one of his biggest accomplishments so far has been building strong relationships with parents and faculty.
He meets regularly with students, parents, and faculty to try putting kids “at the driver’s seat of their learning,” he said, pointing to his involvement in Rye’s chapter of Challenge Success, a nationwide organization that promotes student well-being and engagement with learning.
Students have expressed gratitude for teachers who greet them at the door and try not to overwhelm them with testing. So, Hara explained, instead of a written exam, students recently participated in a Congress simulation for their government class.
Hara also spoke of the importance of extracurricular involvement for students, citing Rye’s 37 student-run clubs. He said extracurriculars help students feel more connected to school, often fostering friendships rooted in the clubs and organizations they join.
The educator acknowledged that students learn in the classroom, but said a lot of the lasting memories in high school happen playing sports or engaging in theater, robotics, Model UN, and debate.
“When I think back to my experience in high school, the vast majority of the things that I remember … and that I think most kids remember from school, are the things that happen, as weird as it is to say, outside of the classroom,” he said.
During his own high school years, Hara played basketball and football and volunteered at a senior center in Berkeley, Calif. He played in one of the state’s Asian basketball leagues, he said, where he traveled across the state for games, eventually even playing in Japan.
He enters the Rye City School District during a period of significant transition in leadership for the school district. Schools Superintendent Eric Byrne is retiring this summer and the high school’s top two administrators, Principal Suzanne Short and Assistant Principal William Meyer, resigned last June.
Those changes prompted the hiring of Hara and, months later, Assistant Principal Eunice Chao-Forest.
Chao-Forest joined in December, and Hara said the transition has been smooth, adding Rye “hit the jackpot” with her.
Photo Alison Rodilosso
Rye High School dropped 85 spots in the latest U.S. News and World Report rankings of public high schools, but Hara said he never has considered those rankings to be an accurate reflection of a school’s excellence.
Highlighting the high school’s strengths, including its extensive course catalog and small class sizes, Hara’s vision instead blends forward-thinking initiatives while preserving some of the school’s intrinsic traditions.
“Whatever is done here, I’m being very mindful that it should be tastefully done and match what’s here,” he said. “I’m mindful that some of what has been done, you want to make sure that you preserve that.
“But sometimes, just like anywhere, fresh ideas are a good thing,” he added.
“So I think that’s kind of finding that balance. If enough people have said, ‘This is something that I love about Rye,’ it’s something you should probably preserve.”
