Carol Cheng is stepping down after nine years on the Syosset Central School District Board of Education, including three as its president, leaving six candidates to compete for three open seats in the May 19 election.
Cheng was first elected to the board in 2017 and took over as president in 2023. Her departure, confirmed after the Monday, April 20, filing deadline passed, means Syosset voters will be choosing from a field that includes one incumbent and five newcomers. Trustee Anna Levitan is also not returning. She served nine years on the board, brought experience as a former PTA executive officer and founder of a local tutoring prep service, and is walking away without seeking another term.
Susan Falkove is the only sitting member running again, going for her third term. She’ll share the ballot with five challengers: Inna Choi, Lisa Li, Rahul Nabe, Bran Tvedt, and Corey Witt. All six are competing for three seats, each carrying a three-year term.
Cheng’s tenure wasn’t quiet. She was the board president in December 2023 when the Nassau County Police Department was called to a board meeting after residents raised concerns about antisemitism and Islamophobia during the public comment portion. The district also shifted away from its “Braves” name and imagery under her watch, after New York State prohibited school districts from using Native American symbols and names. Those weren’t easy calls, and Cheng was at the front of both.
The Syosset race is part of a larger wave of school board elections happening across Nassau and Suffolk Counties on May 19, when community voters will go to their respective districts to vote on board candidates alongside proposed 2026-2027 school budgets and any other district propositions on the ballot. The Nassau County school district election calendar lists Syosset among the dozens of districts holding votes that day.
In neighboring Jericho, the Nassau County district is seeing its own transition. Trustee Jill Citron is not seeking re-election after nine years on the board, which included a stint as board president. Two seats are open, with incumbent Divya Balachanler running again alongside candidate Ira Checkla.
Citron’s exit comes with some history attached to it. Her name surfaced prominently in a controversy tied to former Jericho Superintendent Hank Grishman, who proposed renaming Cantiague Elementary School after himself before his retirement in 2025. The community didn’t take it well. A petition signed by 33 people called for Citron to resign, alleging she failed to act transparently in her role as board vice president when she vocally supported the proposed name change.
The petition language, as reported by Long Island Press, accused Citron of demonstrating “a blatant” disregard for community input, though the full text of the source material was cut off before the complete quote could be published.
Citron didn’t resign. She finished out her term.
Whether the naming controversy factored into her decision not to run again isn’t clear. What is clear is that Jericho voters will head to the polls May 19 with two fresh faces on the ballot and no familiar incumbent to anchor either seat.
Both Syosset and Jericho sit in Nassau County, where school board elections have increasingly drawn contested fields and elevated voter interest as property taxes and school spending continue to press on household budgets. According to New York State Education Department data, Long Island districts routinely rank among the highest-spending in the country on a per-pupil basis, which makes board composition a real financial question for homeowners, not just an abstract governance one.
In Syosset, the outgoing Cheng leaves a board that navigated two genuinely divisive community moments in a short span. Whether the six candidates running to fill the three seats have articulated clear positions on those issues or offered anything beyond campaign biography, voters haven’t had much time to find out. The filing deadline was Monday. The election is May 19. That’s less than four weeks.
Falkove, as the only returning incumbent, carries the institutional memory into whatever the next board looks like. The other two seats will be held by people who haven’t served before, whoever wins them. For a district that’s been through a name change controversy and a police-attended public meeting in the past three years, that’s not a small thing.