Multiple school districts on Nassau County’s North Shore are set to have contested races for their Boards of Education as the Monday, April 20, filing deadline for candidates has passed.
School districts’ BOE candidates will be on the same ballot as the proposed 2026-2027 slate, along with any other propositions that districts will propose to voters, on Tuesday, May 19, when community voters will gather in their respective districts to cast their ballots.
Five candidates are running to fill three seats on the Oyster Bay-East Norwich school board for the upcoming election.
Incumbents Nancy Castrogiovanni and Maryann Santos will face challenges from Todd Cronin, Ann Marie Longo, and Alina Vegliante to serve on the board for four years.
Ann Marie Longo is a former school board president who was on the board for 12 years. Longo said she sent her children to Oyster Bay-East Norwich schools, and now she has grandchildren who attend them.
Longo said she chose to run again because she is upset about the district’s lack of transparency.
“I’m not confident in the information I get when I ask questions,” she said. “The only way to enact change is to run for the school board.”
Vegliante is an attorney with two sons attending district schools, where she said they have had a largely positive experience, but what drove her to run for the school board was the district’s elementary school technology policy.
“The more I looked into the research on the use of screens in early education, the more I learned of its detriments and the lack of any support for the claimed benefits. I soon learned that my concerns were shared by a large number of parents in the district,” Vegliante wrote in a statement.
“While the issue of technology in early education is what caused me to run, being a board member means confronting tough challenges and overseeing numerous other needs of the community. I am excited to take on these challenges and collaborate with the community to ensure we are putting our students in a position to flourish,” she continued.
Source: LI Press
