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The School District of Haverford Township is governed by a nine-member elected school board,all of whose members live in the township. Each board member is elected for a four-year term of office. The board meets on the first and third Thursday of every month(except in special circumstances, refer to meeting schedule above) in the Public Board Room at Oakmont School. Meetings begin at 7:30PMunless otherwise advertised. To communicate with The Board of School Directors via eMail click here: havschbd@havsd.net. Please provide your name and contact information so that we may best respond to you.
Comcast Cable Channel 11 / Verizon FiOS Channel 40broadcasts videotaped recordings of the meeting. The public is invited to attend all public meetings. Cable Channel 11 runs the taped meeting on the weekend following the meeting at the following times: Friday,Saturday, and Sunday at 4PM and 8PM & Saturday and Sunday at 8AM.Also, Wednesdays (immediately after the meeting) at 4PM, 8PM, and 11PM.
Denis A. Gray was elected president of the Haverford Township Board of Schoo lDirectors in 1999. A long-time resident of the township he serves, Gray is a Haverford High School graduate. He earned a bachelor's degree in accounting from St. Joseph's University and after graduating from the Widener University School of Law, began working as an attorney in both Delaware and Montgomery counties. He is currently a partner with Palmer& Gray LLP, a Malvern, PA law firm.
An active member of the school community, Mr. Gray has served on the school board's Communications Sub-Committee and the IntraDistrictCouncil. He was among the first officers of the Haverford High School Sports Hall of Fame. Since his election to the board in 1996, Mr. Gray has also served as Facilities Committee Chairman and board vice-president. He and his wife Dawn have four children. His three younger children attend Haverford Township Schools, one is at Coopertown Elementary and two are at the Middle School.
Maxine Murdoch Ph.D. is a graduate of Union College in Kentucky and received a master's degree and doctorate in English literature from Brown University in 1975.
Currently, as a trustee of Union College, Ms. Murdoch serves on the development and academic affairs committees. She has been involved in educational administration and consulting for several years, including her work in New York for Robert College, an American School in Istanbul, Turkey. Over the years, Maxine has been involved in numerous PTO activities for Haverford Township schools. She is active in the Brown University Alumni Schools Committee as an alumna interviewer for prospective Brown applicants. She represents the school board as aliaison to the Delaware County Community College. She currently serves as school board Vice-President.
She has lived in the township for more than 20 years with her husband Kelsey. They have four children all of whom are graduates of Haverford High School.
Coleen Bennett has been an active member of the school community for many years, regularly volunteering as a homeroom parent and working on numerous PTO committees, including May Day, Website, and Book Fair. Since 2007, she has served as a member (Co-Chair since 2009), of the Haverford School District’s Intra-District Council, a group that promotes communication among the district’s elementary, middle and high schools and the school board. She also volunteers her time to help with a variety of youth sports, including serving as a youth coach with the Haverford Soccer Club.
Coleen has 20 years of experience working in the field of education and is currently a curriculum developer for a nonprofit education organization whose programs and materials are in use around the United States and internationally. She earned her bachelor’s degree and her master’s degree in teaching from Johns Hopkins University. She has dedicated her entire professional career to improving public education, and wants to use her knowledge and experience to promote the continued success of Haverford Township students and schools, and Havertown as a community.
Coleen and her husband Matt have lived in the township since 1999. They have two children, one attends Haverford Middle School and one attends Lynnewood Elementary.
A school director from 1995 to 1999, Russell Bilotta returned to his seat on the board in December 2005. Russ is the Director for Administrative Systems for Neumann College. Bilotta has been involved in computer maintenance and software administration for more than 20 years. His expertise has been primarily with post-secondary schools including currently Neumann College in Aston, Burlington County College in New Jersey, and LaSalle University. He feels his 20 years of experience in a technical field will allow him to serve the kindergarten
through 12th grade students well.
His long-time interest in and knowledge of construction is an assetas the district moves into another reconstruction phase with the completion of the new Chestnutwold School and as the plans for a new Manoa School move forward.
Mr. Bilotta attended Drexel University majoring in Business Management. He is a member of several professional organizations and served as the vice-president of Radnor Township's Townwatch Association in the early 1980s.
He is married with three daughters. The youngest is a Haverford High School student.
Mr.Feinberg has been a school director since 1999. He is the President ofThe Local Group, Inc., a Haverford based information systems consulting firm and has over 30 years of business consulting experience. A graduate of Central High School in Philadelphia, he has a B.S. in Management Information Systems from LaSalle University and attended Villanova University for graduate business coursework. He has been a Haverford Township resident since 1982.
As the School Board's Legislative Liaison he works actively with our state and federal officials on education issues. He is Chairman of the Delaware County School Boards Legislative Council, which advocates for public education on behalf of the 74,000 public school students in Delaware County's 15 school districts. Feinberg has also been appointed to his fourth 2 year term as a member of the National School Boards Association's Federal Relations Network and in that role seeks to ensure that public education is a top priority of the federal government. In 2005 he founded and now co-chairs the Southeastern PA School Districts Education Coalition, a grass roots group of school board members from school districts in Delaware, Chester, Montgomery and Lehigh counties. He has represented the board on the School District's Data Management and Technology Committees and also served on the Communications Subcommittee and Strategic Planning Steering Committee.
In 2007 Mr. Feinberg served on the Pennsylvania School Boards Association's Legislative Action Council that sets legislative priorities statewide for the association. He testified before the Governor's Task Force on School Cost Reduction, and was invited by the State Board of Education to participate in an Education Costing Out Study to determine the cost associated with enabling all students to achieve the state's academic standards. He has testified before the House Education Committee regarding cyber charter school funding and accountability and has provided testimony to the House and Senate Education Committees and the Independent Regulatory Review Commission regarding proposed graduation competency assessments.
Prior to joining the board he served on the School District's Swimming Pool Advisory Subcommittee. As a volunteer for the YMCA he served as Chairman of the Board of Managers of the Main Line Y and as a member of the Board of Directors of the YMCA of Philadelphia and Vicinity. Mr. Feinberg was also a member of the Board of Directors of the Haverford Village Condominium Association. A longtime runner, he has completed twenty-five slow marathons. He and his wife Ingrid, a Gerontological Nurse Specialist and former board member of the Coopertown PTO, have two children who attend Haverford Township schools.
Larry Feinberg elected to the Board of Directors of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association
Patricia Giambuzzi, mother of a Haverford High School student and a Haverford High School graduate, has been an active member of the school community chairing Manoa Elementary School's book fair and working as a homeroom mother.
She is currently the associate director of Development for Main Line Health Heart Center where she is responsible for helping to organize fund-raising events, secure donations and managing a major donor list for the center. She is also an active member of the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania serving as their director of development since 1993.
She attended the University of Delaware and is married to Ray Giambuzzi. Together they have raised two grown children along with their two younger children.
School Director James E. Goldschmidt PhD is the vice president and the executive officer of TetraLogic Pharmaceutical in Malvern, PA where he is responsible for corporate development and strategy, business development, investor transactions and company operations.
A graduate of Villanova University, Dr. Goldschmidt earned a master’s degree at Drexel University and a doctoral degree from Temple University’s School of Medicine.
Dr. Goldschmidt served on the board for 12 years beginning in 1991 chairing the board’s finance committee from 1995 to 2003.
During his term on the board he hopes to make sure all township public school students receive a diverse curriculum of both core subjects and elective courses that challenge them every day and prepare them for the future. He emphasizes theimportance of providing students with the skills and confidence not only to succeed but to believe in themselves. Dr. Goldschmidt wants to make sure the district provides these important services while ensuring that tax dollars are spent wisely and efficiently especially during these difficult economic times.
Dr. Goldschmidt lives in Haverford with his wife, Sandy, a registered nurse, and their four children all of whom attended the old Manoa Elementary School and Haverford Middle School. The youngest, Lindsay and Sondra, are current Haverford High Schools students. Lindsay plans to attend nursing school in the fall. His two oldest children are HHS graduates. Christopher now attends the Widener School of Law and Ashley is a student at Penn State’s Smeal School of Business.
Phil Hopkins was elected to his fourth term as member of the School Board in November 2005. He began his school board career in 1985 and was elected again in 1997 and 2001. He is currently Chairman of the Finance Committee, and is the District's representative on the Board of Directors of the Delaware County Intermediate Unit, a county-wide education services agency that provides special education services to Delaware County school districts. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the Delaware County Vocational Technical Schools. An economist, he is currently the Director of Research for Select Greater Philadelphia, a non-profit regional economic development marketing organization that promotes economic development in the Philadelphia region. Select Greater Philadelphia is affiliated with the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce.
Previously, a Managing Director in U. S. Regional Services for Global Insight, an economic forecasting firm, Hopkins has over 25 years of consulting experience in preparing economic studies. An active parent in the district, he served on the High School 2000 Committee and the Strategic Planning Committee in 1995.
Hopkins earned a bachelor's degree in Economics from the University of Michigan and a Master's degree in City and Regional Planning from Ohio State University. He is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners and the National Association of Business Economics.
He and his wife Jo live in the Pennfield section of the township and has been a Haverford Township resident since 1983. His three children started their education at the Chestnutwold, Chatham Park and Coopertown elementary schools, and all are graduates of Haverford High School. His oldest daughter Kelly is a graduate of Boston University; his son Matthew is a recent graduate of the University of Delaware, and his daughter Jennifer is a recent graduate of the Laboratory Institute of Merchandising, a college in Manhattan that specializes in the fashion industry.
Joseph Martin is a Professor of Civil Engineering at Drexel University, working there for over 25 years. He was formerly Head of the Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering department, and is now Associate Director of the Engineering Management program. Dr. Martin has degrees from Tufts, Northeastern and Colorado State Universities, and is a licensed Professional Engineer. Prior to being elected to the School District Board in 2003, he was Chair of Haverford Township Environmental Advisory Committee. He has an honorable discharge from the US Army, and has been active in Boy Scout Troop 463 and the Constellation District Eagle Board. The immediate family includes Mrs. Catherine Martin, a journalist, and two grown children, Robert and Kelly Martin.
