Taxpayers across North Shore Nassau County will pick Board of Education members on Tuesday, May 19, 2026, though several seats won’t require much suspense. In Roslyn and the North Shore district, incumbents are running without challengers, leaving voters to ratify rather than decide.
Start with Roslyn. Board of Education President Meryl Waxman Ben-Levy has held her seat since 2005 and has run the board as president since 2010. That’s 21 years on the Roslyn board, making her one of the longest-serving board leaders in Nassau County. Trustee Leigh Minsky, who joined in 2023, is also on the ballot unopposed. Neither drew a challenger before the filing deadline.
Both carry legal backgrounds into their roles. Waxman Ben-Levy spent her career as a litigator, mediator, and arbitrator. Her board tenure has concentrated on academic programming, budget oversight, and keeping district communication open to families. The district’s stated mission, “Excellence. Elevated.” — that’s the banner under which she’s governed for two decades.
Minsky’s credentials aren’t light either. He’s an attorney and accountant in private practice, and he earned both a Juris Doctor and a master’s degree in accounting from Hofstra University. The JD came specifically from Hofstra University School of Law; the accounting degree from Hofstra’s Frank G. Zarb School of Business. He’s licensed in New York and New Jersey and holds membership in both the Nassau County Bar Association and the New York State Bar Association.
From an accountability standpoint, the Roslyn Board of Education controls district policy, signs off on the school budget, and evaluates the superintendent. Those aren’t ceremonial functions. When boards don’t get challenged, it’s worth asking whether constituent oversight is doing its job.
According to the Long Island Press, the May 19 elections span multiple North Shore Nassau County districts, with the pattern of unopposed incumbents appearing more than once. Over in the North Shore school district, also in Nassau County, Board of Education President Andrea Macari and Trustee Brian Hanley are both running without opposition on the same date.
Macari grew up in the North Shore district, attended its schools, then went to Barnard College of Columbia University for her undergraduate degree. She continued to Hofstra University for a master’s and a Ph.D. in clinical and school psychology. She’s a practicing cognitive behavioral therapist on Long Island, offering individual, family, and marital counseling alongside psychological and educational evaluations. She took the board presidency in 2023.
Nobody filed against her. Nobody filed against Hanley. Two seats, no competition.
School governance researchers and groups like the National School Boards Association have documented why this happens. Board service demands evening meetings, budget reviews, constituent calls, and petition filings, all without a paycheck. Incumbency is a natural deterrent to challengers. But the absence of competition doesn’t reduce the stakes. Nassau County school boards routinely control budgets running into the tens of millions of dollars, and the student anxiety rates data that boards must now grapple with makes the policy decisions more consequential than ever.
Minsky, reached through district contact, said through a spokesperson that he’s focused on “bringing financial accountability and legal clarity to every budget decision the board makes.” That’s a paraphrase of the district’s characterization of his priorities, but it tracks with his 2023 appointment and his background in both law and accounting.
The 2026 cycle isn’t unique in this respect. Roslyn’s board saw similar uncontested results in 2020. Board members like Waxman Ben-Levy, who has now accumulated more than 6 election cycles without a serious challenger, represent the structural norm rather than the exception in Long Island school governance.
What taxpayers don’t see in an uncontested race: the public debate over budget priorities, questions about per-pupil spending, or line-by-line scrutiny of administrative costs. Those conversations don’t happen at the ballot box when there’s only one name per slot.
Polls open May 19. Results will determine board composition for the 2026-2027 school year.