Three Nassau County school districts have locked in their candidate rosters for the May 19 board elections, with Herricks and Carle Place shaping up as competitive contests while Westbury’s two incumbents will run without opposition.
The Herricks Union Free School District, in New Hyde Park, sees the most crowded field. Trustees James Gounaris and Henry Zanetti are both stepping down, leaving two open seats and drawing five candidates to fill them. That’s the kind of opening that tends to scramble a board’s institutional direction, and Herricks voters haven’t seen anything quite like it for a while.
For Gounaris’s seat, the race is a straight two-candidate matchup: Lisa Iuculano against Eric Lo, a financial adviser who has run in the district before. Lo brings name recognition and prior campaign experience, which counts for something when turnout is thin. Iuculano is a fresh entrant. Voters in that race have a clear binary choice, which generally helps both candidates make their case.
The Zanetti seat draws three candidates: Nidhi Guru, neurologist Ritech Ramdhani, and Athul Santhoush, described by the district as a recent graduate. Three-way races with a split electorate and low expected turnout can produce unpredictable results. Santhoush’s youth and newcomer status could be a liability or an asset depending on which voters actually show up on May 19.
Herricks didn’t report recent turnout figures, but the neighboring Carle Place numbers tell the story well enough. The Carle Place School District saw roughly 1,100 voters in its 2024 election and only about 580 in the 2025 budget vote, according to Long Island Press. That 47% drop-off between a contested election year and a budget-only year reflects a pattern that holds across Nassau County: most residents simply don’t show up unless there’s something on the ballot that feels immediate to them.
Carle Place has that this year. Board President Vanessa Dong-Monaco and Board Vice President Kathleen Reardon are both seeking re-election, and four challengers have submitted petitions to run against them: Viki Santos Brenner, Kimberly Ribarich, Guarav Singh, and Christine Aguilar. Six candidates competing for what are almost certainly two seats means the incumbents can’t coast. Dong-Monaco and Reardon carry the advantage of name recognition and the credibility of having served in leadership roles, but a four-person challenger field with enough organizational energy could split the incumbent vote in ways that are hard to predict.
School board elections on Long Island have a way of looking sleepy until they don’t. Property tax levies, curriculum disputes, and superintendent contracts have a habit of surfacing in the weeks before voting day, turning a quiet race into something contentious fast. Carle Place is a small district. When engaged parents decide they don’t like the direction of a board, they show up in groups.
Six hundred votes can decide everything.
The Westbury School District, in Nassau County, is running a quieter operation. Incumbent board members Robin Bolling and Rodney Caines are running unopposed for re-election. The district’s most recent board elections drew nearly 500 voters. Without opposition, both are effectively confirmed for another term. Unopposed races still require a formal vote, but absent a write-in campaign or some last-minute disruption, Bolling and Caines are returning to the board.
Westbury’s situation reflects a reality that most school board observers know well. Finding qualified candidates willing to serve is genuinely difficult. Board members handle significant financial and personnel decisions for no pay, on nights and weekends, for a term of three years. The districts that draw five or six candidates are the exception. Most years, in most districts, the challenge is finding enough warm bodies to keep the board seats filled.
That’s not a knock on Westbury. It’s context.
All three districts hold their elections on May 19. Polls open to registered voters in each district, and the New York State Education Department sets the baseline rules governing candidate eligibility and election procedures. Residents in Herricks, Carle Place, and Westbury who want to confirm their polling locations can check with their individual district offices or through the Nassau County Board of Elections. The stakes are real: school boards set tax levies, approve budgets, and hire superintendents. In Nassau County, where the median school property tax bill runs well into the thousands annually, who sits on these boards matters in ways that show up directly on homeowners’ bills every year.