The following are statements made by the candidates:

I'm running for a seat on the board of education. Last year when the school budget was defeated for a second time I was very disheartened that our children and community were faced with the dilemma of a contingency budget. I am a firm believer that a strong academic and well-rounded environment is extremely important for our schools. I also believe that it is equally as important to address the issue of rising taxes and to keep increases to a minimum while maintaining school programs.

Win or lose, I will continue to support the board of education and the administration of the OB-EN School District.

I am a graduate of Oyster Bay High School and lifelong resident of Oyster Bay. I hold a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing from Fairleigh Dickinson University. Upon graduating from college, I returned to Oyster Bay and worked in the electronic industry as a salesperson for 12 years. For the next 13 years I was co-owner and co-founder of a manufacturing and distribution firm in the electronics field. We were based on Long Island and serviced the New York Metropolitan area.

My husband, Paul Longo, is also an alumnus of OBHS and lifelong resident. Paul along with his two brothers and father own and operate a construction company in Oyster Bay. We have three children in Oyster Bay High School, grades 8, 10 and 12, who are third generation educated in this school system. My mother graduated from Oyster Bay High School class of 1940.

During the past 12 years aside from running a business and keeping up a household, I was intractably involved in all three of my children's schooling. I volunteered for class mom in all of my children's classes, sometimes being involved in more than one class at a time. I attended, whenever possible, all field trips and classroom events with my children. I have been a member of the PTA and at one point in time was board representative for the Vernon PTA.

As a community, we need a school budget. It is disheartening that this year our district is on a contingency budget. I feel that maintaining and building a strong academic and well-rounded education for our children is very important. In my opinion one of the most challenging jobs for any board is to attain these goals while keeping costs in line and increases to a minimum. I feel that my business and life experiences, along with being a parent of three children in the school district would be an asset to the board of education.

I am running for my second four-year term on our local school board because I believe in providing a well-rounded, high-quality education for all the children within our district and ensuring that each child has an equal access to all of the opportunities that lie before them. The current school board has worked very diligently to create a budget for the coming year that shows fiscal responsibility both in the short-term operations of the school district as well as the long-term planning for financial liabilities and facility maintenance. Taxes are too high, we all experience the impact of increasing costs with everything we do. The board has heard that message loud and clear, but as taxpayers ourselves, it's a message we initiate as well - no one has to sit around waiting to hear it.

Our community has a critical decision to make. There will always be more than one perspective with everything we do. But the choices are simple. Reasonable people can sit in a room, discuss their differences, make an effort to come to a consensus and hopefully come to reasonable conclusions.

Make no mistake, it requires a tremendous amount of effort and it requires one to listen to other ideas as well as sharing their own. Fortunately, there are a great many in our community that choose to make that effort.

There are others that do not participate at all in the process, then at the 11th hour, choose to throw stones and make accusations from the sidelines.

It serves only to create divisions in our community. For those that have made the effort thus far, while we may not always agree, I thank you for your time and energy and look forward to continued dialogue so that we may create the most rewarding environment for the youth of our community. For those that choose the latter, I invite you to participate in the entire budget development process. It's not a one-day event. It starts in Jan/Feb and continues until the budget is adopted by the board, which takes place only after hearing input from the community throughout that process. I am entirely open to hearing your viewpoints. I certainly hope you are open to hearing mine.

James Robinson has served as an Oyster Bay-East Norwich Central School District Board Trustee for the last four years and is now seeking re-election to a second four-year term. Mr. Robinson has completed school board training sessions in Albany and devotes many hours per week to local school board issues.

Mr. Robinson became interested in serving on the school board because he wanted to make a greater contribution to the community and the students of our district. Having graduated from Oyster Bay High School, Mr. Robinson feels a sense of pride when it comes to the community and has been extraordinarily dedicated to his goals of helping to improve communications, performance and accountability of the school district.

Mr. Robinson has worked diligently the last four years with other school board members and the district administrators in an effort to bring about increased student performance in a fiscally sound environment. While Mr. Robinson believes these challenges remain constant in the day-to-day operations of a school district, he feels the district has made great strides and is moving in the right direction.

Mr. Robinson feels there are great challenges that lie ahead for our community. First and foremost is bringing the entire community back together and building consensus towards a common vision and direction for our public schools and for the benefit of our youth and their education. This has already been started through the combined efforts of many in establishing the first Budget Forum, which took place in early February in an effort to bring the community more closely together in the very beginning phases of the school budget development process. Another significant addition has been a collection of Leadership Forums which have brought together many community leaders in an environment that allows objective input and brainstorming to help establish more concrete priorities for the school district.

Mr. Robinson spent 11 years with the ABC Television Network in operations and affiliate relations. He spent another year with a joint venture between ABC News and Starwave Corporation developing local distribution strategies for ABCNews.com. After its successful launch in 1997, Mr. Robinson left ABC to establish a technology consulting group, The Sound Visuals Corporation. In 1999, Mr. Robinson also established Anywhere Card Solutions, a pre-paid credit card technology company in partnership with MasterCard International and has served as its president since inception. Mr. Robinson enjoys the challenges of start-up organizations and utilizing his creative talents to achieve positive results.

James Robinson has been a resident of East Norwich for nearly his entire life and has been very active in various community organizations. Mr. Robinson has participated in Cub Scout Pack 253 activities, PAL Sports and Rough Rider Football. Mr. Robinson is one of the original founders and current board members of Oyster Bay Little League Baseball which services over 450 local families and has grown substantially since its inception in 2003. Mr. Robinson is also a co-founder of Long Island HellCats Travel Baseball program which has taken teams throughout New York and Connecticut to various tournaments.

Mr. Robinson currently resides in East Norwich with his wife, Mary and their two sons. He enjoys spending his (little) spare time sailing, being with his wife and children and working on various home improvement projects.

My name is Jim Smiros and I am running for a second term on the Oyster Bay-East Norwich Central School District Board of Education. I have served as a board member and trustee of the OBEN Central School District for the past five years and board president for the current year: I was initially appointed by the board to fill a vacant seat for one year and am currently completing my first full four-year term.

The board is in the process of contract negotiations and has much work to do with the bond for the improvement of Vernon and Oyster Bay High School along with many other important issues, which I would like to see through to fruition.

This is a contested election with three candidates running for two seats. Please support my position on the board and re-elect me for an additional four years so that I may continue the work we have started. The vote takes place on Tuesday, May 16 from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. at the Oyster Bay High School. Remember, your vote counts.

Jim Smiros has been a member of the Oyster Bay community for 20 years. Mr. Smiros lives locally with Laura, his wife; their two children Christina, age 13, who attends seventh grade at OBHS and Dean, his son age 10, who attends fifth grade at the Vernon School; Anthony, Laura's nephew, age 21, a 2002 OBHS Alumni, who will be graduating from NYU this month with a B.S. in Philosophy and a minor in Classics; and Eileen, Laura's mother.

Mr. Smiros is actively involved in community service as sitting President of Oyster Bay-East Norwich Board of Education. Jim also served as committee chair of OBEN Cub Scouts Pack 253 for the past two years and was recognized by the Boy Scouts of America this past November with a Community Service Award for his efforts on behalf of local children. The Smiros' are supporters of local children's activities and charities and are parishioners of St. Dominic's RC Church.

Jim has served as a board member and trustee of the OBEN Central School District for the past five years. Initially appointed by the board to fill a vacant seat and currently completing his first full four-year term, Jim is now seeking re-election to a second four-year term. Mr. Smiros was elected unanimously by fellow Board Members to serve as president of the board this year. Having completed training sessions in Albany, Rochester, White Plains and locally, totaling more than 40 hours. Jim was recently honored by New York State School Boards Association for his extensive training.

As a board member, Mr. Smiros has worked to create new opportunities for communications between the public and board including: the introduction of public comment at board work-sessions, to ensure that those members of the public that took the time to attend a Board Work-session had a voice; and the creation of Leadership Forums and Budget Forums, where the public was invited to participate in board level work. These improvements in communications have proven essential to restoring trust in local public education.

As board president this year, Jim played an essential role in development of a bond for the renovation and expansion of the Vernon School to meet the demands of a growing school age population and the renovation of the outdated science labs at the OBHS that was approved by voters this March. Mr. Smiros used his training and background as an architect to guide the board through the final planning of the Roosevelt School expansion and will bring that same expertise to the new bond work. Moreover, Mr. Smiros and the board have worked closely along with their new communication network to create a budget that balances the needs of our student population and taxpayers and holds the annual budget increase to 4.54 percent while the statewide average is 6.3 percent.

Jim Smiros, the design partner at Smiros & Smiros Architects in Glen Cove, is a gifted manager and artist capable of sculpting dreams into reality. Born with the natural ability to understand others and work with people, complimented with a keen eye for organization and details, Jim Smiros has successfully led S&S through projects in New York, Palm Beach, Russia and England. A native New Yorker born and raised on Long Island, Jim's mother is a local artist and his father a business executive. He attended public schools and received a bachelor of architecture from the Old Westbury campus of the New York Institute of Technology. While at NYIT, Jim was president of the Student Chapter of the AIA, received the prestigious AIA Scholarship and extended his academic studies at the American Academy of Rome in Italy under the personal direction of Dean Olindo Grossi. Following 12 years at the architectural firm of Edward Durell Stone Assoc., Mr. Smiros and Laura Smiros, his wife, opened their own studio in 1993 in Glen Cove. Since then, their practice has focused on well-designed commercial and residential projects, with a focus on traditional country estate homes and has grown to include a team of 20 talented professionals. High personal standards and expectations of co-workers have served to cultivate a confident and respectable clientele for their firm.

When asked why he is running for the board again, Mr. Smiros will tell you that he enjoys the challenge it presents and that he likes stretching himself to meet new opportunities, but most significant is his sense of civic duty. Mr. Smiros says, "My personal mission is to ensure that all the children in our district have equal access to a quality education and all of the opportunities that affords."