Taxpayers in Manhasset’s school district will seat a new board member on May 20, 2026, and that member won’t have had to beat a single opponent to get there.
Jenna Rizzo, 40, filed before the April 20 deadline and found herself the only candidate in the race after longtime board president Ted Post declined to seek re-election. The Nassau County district, which has historically drawn competitive school board contests, attracted no challengers. “It is surprising that no one else is running,” Rizzo said.
Post’s decision not to file came first. He cited “completely personal reasons” in a statement to the Manhasset Press, offering no elaboration beyond that. He did leave the district with a parting assessment: it’s in “very capable hands,” he said. That’s the full extent of his public explanation.
So who steps in? Rizzo grew up in Commack, Suffolk County, and relocated to Manhasset in 2017 with her husband. Three daughters. Two are at Munsey Park Elementary School. One is at the middle school level. By her own description, it’s a household built entirely around kids’ schedules.
Her professional background isn’t thin. Before leaving teaching to raise her children, Rizzo worked as a classroom teacher in Great Neck and Herricks, both Nassau County districts, covering second and fifth grade. She holds a master’s degree in special education. Those aren’t honorary credentials. They’re working experience in exactly the kind of complex instructional and compliance terrain that school boards have to navigate, particularly as special education caseloads and legal obligations keep growing.
She didn’t move directly from the classroom to a board seat. For the past two years, Rizzo served as president of the Munsey Park School Community Association, running fundraising and coordinating parent enrichment programs at the building level. That’s the kind of institutional knowledge that doesn’t come from reading board minutes. “That experience really gave me an appreciation for the community and the people working with our children every day,” she told Long Island Press.
Her stated platform tracks closely with the Manhasset School District’s current strategic direction, though she’s careful not to overstate her mandate. She’s running on continuity with a watchful eye for drift. “Education is always changing,” she said. “It’s about making sure we’re not becoming complacent, looking at what’s working, and asking what else we can do better.” On special education, she expects to draw on her own training to push those programs forward. She doesn’t plan to walk in swinging. “I don’t want to come in with a set agenda,” she said. “The board works together on those decisions.”
That’s a reasonable stance for a first-term member, and it’s consistent with what the New York State School Boards Association recommends for new trustees: learn the board’s existing culture before trying to reshape it.
What’s harder to explain is the empty field. Manhasset isn’t a district that usually lets board seats go uncontested. It’s a well-resourced Nassau County community where school elections draw real attention and real turnout. Post’s departure should’ve created at least some competition. It didn’t. Whether that reflects community satisfaction, poor outreach, or something else, no one’s publicly said.
Rizzo’s uncontested path doesn’t mean the seat came easy. She’s got 20-plus years of education experience between the classroom and school-based parent leadership, and she’s done the kind of local relationship work that tends to produce board candidates in the first place. Serving two years as a Munsey Park School Community Association president while raising three daughters in the district isn’t a casual commitment.
What that experience can’t fully substitute for is what she’ll learn once she’s actually in the room. Board work is financial, legal, political, and often contentious in ways that community association roles aren’t. Post understood that. He’s been around long enough to know what he’s leaving behind. His confidence that the district’s in capable hands suggests he thinks Rizzo can handle it. Whether that confidence holds up will become clear by April or May of the next election cycle.
The seat, as of May 20, 2026, is hers.