Five candidates are chasing three seats on the Oyster Bay-East Norwich school board, setting up one of the more competitive Nassau County Board of Education races ahead of the May 19 district vote.
The filing deadline passed Monday, April 20, locking in the field. Incumbents Nancy Castrogiovanni and Maryann Santos will face three challengers: Todd Cronin, Ann Marie Longo, and Alina Vegliante. Whoever wins serves a four-year term. Voters will cast their ballots on the same day they weigh in on the proposed 2026-2027 school budget and any other district propositions.
Longo isn’t a newcomer to the boardroom. She served 12 years on the Oyster Bay-East Norwich board, including a stint as board president, and she’s coming back with a specific grievance about how the district handles information requests. Her children went through district schools. Now her grandchildren do.
“I’m not confident in the information I get when I ask questions,” Longo told Long Island Press. “The only way to enact change is to run for the school board.”
That’s a pointed critique from someone who spent over a decade inside the system she’s now criticizing. Longo’s case to voters rests squarely on transparency.
Vegliante, an attorney, came to the race from a different direction. Her two sons attend district schools and, by her account, have had a largely positive experience there. What pushed her toward running wasn’t a broad policy complaint. It was screens.
Specifically, the district’s elementary school technology policy. Vegliante started looking into research on screen use in early education and didn’t like what she found.
“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,” she said in a written statement. “I soon learned that my concerns were shared by a large number of parents in the district.”
She’s careful to frame screen time as the entry point, not the whole platform. “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,” she said. “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.”
The concern about screens in early childhood classrooms has been picking up steam among parents nationwide, and Vegliante’s argument draws on a body of research from child development specialists who have raised questions about excessive device use for young children. Whether that translates into votes in an Oyster Bay district race will depend on how many parents share her reading of the evidence.
Cronin, the fifth candidate in the Oyster Bay-East Norwich race, rounds out the field, though no additional detail on his background was available by press time.
The contested race next door. It’s not just Oyster Bay.
In the Locust Valley Central School District, also in Nassau County’s North Shore, three candidates are competing for what appears to be two seats. Holly Gaddis Esteves is running for re-election. Brian Keaveney and Paul Chirichella are each seeking their first three-year terms, with Keaveney running to fill a vacancy and Chirichella challenging for the seat currently held by Matthew Barnes.
Locust Valley’s race is quieter than Oyster Bay-East Norwich’s in terms of public back-and-forth, but the outcome still shapes who controls budget decisions, curriculum direction, and administrative oversight for years to come.
Both races reflect a broader pattern playing out across Long Island school districts this spring: parents who spent the past few years showing up at board meetings are now deciding to show up on the ballot. The New York State School Boards Association tracks candidate filings across the state, and competitive races for school board seats have grown more common since 2022 as debates over curriculum, spending, and post-pandemic policy decisions pushed more residents toward civic engagement.
For Oyster Bay-East Norwich voters, the May 19 ballot will ask them to weigh a returning board president who says the district isn’t being straight with the community, an attorney who followed her kids’ homework assignments down a rabbit hole about tablets and toddlers, an incumbent field defending its record, and a challenger in Cronin whose positions will come into sharper focus as the campaign progresses. Three seats. Five candidates. The vote is four weeks out.