Taxpayers in Farmingdale and across Nassau County will head to the polls on May 19 to fill school board seats that directly control billions in district spending — yet most won’t know who’s on the ballot until the week before.
Ralph Vincent Morales, the Farmingdale School District Board of Education president, won’t be among the names on that ballot. Morales missed the Monday, April 20 petition deadline, ending a run on the board that stretched back to 2014. That’s more than a decade as a volunteer trustee, longer than most people last in a position that generates zero headlines until a budget explodes or a curriculum fight erupts. Morales handles complex litigation across New York City’s five boroughs and Long Island as a trial partner at a law firm — not exactly a light schedule alongside board duties.
His exit opens two three-year seats in Farmingdale. The candidates running to fill them are incumbent trustee Dawn Luisi and Patrick Walsh. Luisi has lived in Farmingdale her entire life and identifies as a Daler. She was first elected in 2023 and has taught certified general and special education for grades 1 through 3 in the Great Neck School District since 2008. Walsh is competing for the second seat. Neither race is guaranteed.
“We’re committed to making sure Farmingdale students have the resources they need,” Luisi told the board at a recent meeting.
The May 19 ballot isn’t just about trustees. Each district’s proposed 2026-2027 budget rides on the same vote, along with any additional propositions. That’s the connection Nassau County’s property tax rates hinge on: what school boards approve gets handed to property owners. Most residents don’t make that connection until the tax bill arrives.
Hicksville is where things get genuinely complicated. Six candidates are chasing three open seats, and every one of those contests is real. Trustee Irene Carlomusto chose not to seek re-election. Two candidates, Kim Raspanti and Carolina Sanchez-Molina, are now competing for her seat. Trustee Sunita Manjrekar, who has served since 2017 and works as a director of employment programs for the Nassau County Department of Social Services, draws a challenge from Mary Dwyer. Trustee Danielle Fotopoulos, a Nassau County Police Department employee who joined the board in 2022, faces Ryan Chaplin. Three districts. Three genuine fights. None of them are coasting to victory.
The Long Island Press first reported the full candidate list across these Nassau County districts after the April 20 filing deadline closed.
In Massapequa, it’s a different kind of crowded. Four candidates are contesting two three-year seats. BOE secretary Cher Lepre and trustee Danielle Ocuto, both first elected in 2023, are defending their positions simultaneously. Bobby Bonnet and Lynn Russo are challenging them. When two incumbents are on the ballot at once, a voter unhappy with district direction gets two chances to say so.
The New York State Education Department sets the framework for how districts operate, but every local spending decision, every contract, every line in a school budget flows through the trustees voters choose in these low-turnout May elections. In Nassau County, where school taxes eat the largest single chunk of most property tax bills, those choices aren’t trivial.
School board elections don’t draw crowds. They don’t get much coverage. Candidates collect signatures on petitions that most residents never see, and the April 20 deadline comes and goes without most homeowners noticing. Then the same homeowners call their county legislators to complain about tax increases that were actually set months earlier in a board room with four people in the audience.
Morales served 12 years. He didn’t run for re-election in a year when Farmingdale has two open seats and no incumbent seeking either one. Walsh and Luisi are the two names voters will see on May 19. One of them is brand new to the board. The other’s been there since 2023. Neither has a long record to defend or attack. That makes those Farmingdale races harder to handicap than the contested Hicksville seats, where voters can at least measure incumbents against their 2017 or 2022 promises.
May 19. Two seats in Farmingdale. Six candidates in Hicksville. Budgets for 2026-2027 on every Nassau County school district ballot.