School Board Retirees
Joss Gelfand, Larry Rosenwald and Marcia Taylor
The DCLMN honors Joss Gelfand, Larry Rosenwald and Marcia Taylor who have
recently stepped down from the Lower Merion School Board. Their many years of
service to the Lower Merion community came during an especially active time on
the School Board. The renovation of all the elementary and middle schools, the
planning, bidding and start of construction of the two high schools, bus
relocation and redistricting have at least partially been overseen by the Board
during their tenures.
Anyone who has attended the sometimes contentious meetings knows of the breadth
of these individuals commitment to educational excellence in the Lower Merion
community. We appreciate their patience, endurance, vision and service on behalf
of our children.
Joss Gelfand
Jonathan (Joss) Gelfand is a native New Yorker who has lived in Bala Cynwyd with his wife, Lynne Shepsman, and his children for 27 years. He has been a practicing physician as a pulmonologist in Philadelphia and has served as a medical staff officer at several Philadelphia Hospitals including a term as president of the medical staff of Moss Rehabilitation Hospital. He has also been a medical director for the Hospice of the Delaware Valley and is currently a medical director for the Friends Hospice of Philadelphia. His son Michael, now a medical and graduate student in New York, graduated from LMHS in 1997 and his daughter Julia, a teacher in a nearby school district, graduated from LMHS in 2001.Joss has been active in the Lower Merion School district since 1991 when he was on the Interschool Council Housing Committee. He was a representative of the Merion School on the school district elementary school redistricting committee and also served on the High School Restructuring Committee. He was an active parent volunteer as a coach of the BC Middle School Science Olympiad Team. Joss became a member of the LMSD Board of School Directors in the spring of 1999. He was re-elected in 2003. He served as vice-president of the board and was chair of the Human Resources Committee for many years. As a member of the school board, Joss is most proud of the board’s implementation of an ongoing cycle of comprehensive revision of the district curriculum and of the approval for the construction of two new high schools to complete the school district facilities program initiated in the early 1990’s. Joss enjoyed his service but is now glad that he achieved, in December 2007, one of his long held ambitions, retirement from the board.
Larry Rosenwald
Larry Rosenwald was appointed to the School Board to fill an unexpired term in January 1999. He was elected to a full term in November 1999 and was reelected in November 2003. For six of his nine years, he served as president of the Board. This was merely a continuation of his service to the school district as he began serving on district committees in 1992 and continued doing so until his appointment to the Board. Included in the committees on which he served are the initial Community Advisory Board and the last full redistricting committee. Larry has been active in the Lower Merion Narberth Democratic party for about 20 years. He served as the first Eastern Regional Vice Chair and has worked in various campaigns. He has been a practicing attorney for 35 years in a variety of areas. Among his achievements on the Board are that he participated in the process of awarding the bids to construct two new high schools and helping to create a sense of community and cooperation with the Township Commissioners to achieve this goal.Marcia Taylor
Marcia served on the Lower Merion School Board from 1999 to 2007 and was Vice-President during her second term. She also served as chair of the Policy Committee and Curriculum Committee. She is a member of the Steering Committee of the Lower Merion – Narberth Community Coalition. Before her time on the School Board, she was President of the Penn Wynne Elementary School HSA and Vice-President of the Bala Cynwyd Middle School HSA. Marcia received her A.B. from Cornell University and her M.D. from Yale University. She is a Dermatologist in private practice. Marcia and her husband Jeremy Rosenblum (a partner at Ballard Spahr Andrews and Ingersoll) have lived in Lower Merion for 27 years. Their three daughters (Alison, Yale ’07; Lauren, Yale ’09 and Amy, LMHS ’08) have all attended Lower Merion public schools.
Democratic Committee of Lower Merion and
Narberth | P.O. Box 522 | Haverford, PA 19041
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