O'Malley To Make School Board Appointments Next Week

Gov. Martin O'Malley will name three appointments to the Baltimore County Board of Education possibly as early as Monday.

Takirra Winfield confirmed the pending re-appointment of one current member and two new members late Friday.

David Uhlfelder, a Pikesville resident and member at large appointed in 2008, will be re-appointed. He will be joined by new members Marisol Johnson and Edward Gilliss.

Johnson is a State Farm Insurance agent with a business in Woodlawn. She is the first Hispanic woman to be appointed to the county school board.

Gilliss is currently an attorney at the Towson law firm and the chairman of the Baltimore County Planning Board. Prior to that, Gilliss served as county attorney for Baltimore County.

"All three are highly qualified appointees who will help us continue to build on our record as the number one school system in the country," Winfield said Friday.

Ellen Kobler, a spokeswoman for Baltimore County, confirmed that the three pending appointments were names that County Executive Kevin Kamenetz sent to the governor.

Gilliss will step down from his position on the Planning Board at a "date to be determined," Kobler said. Gilliss was appointed to the position in 2007. His term expired Dec. 31, 2012.

It is not immediately clear whom Johnson and Gilliss are specifically replacing. Kobler referred questions about outgoing school board members to school officials who were not immediately available.

The school system website shows that term of Valerie Roddy, the vice president of the board, expires at the end of June.

Roddy, who was appointed to the board in August 2008, told Patch in February that she would not seek a second term.

Cornelia Bright Gordon, a Towson attorney, was appointed in July 2011. Her term expired in June of 2012, according to the school board website.

The governor's office confirmed the names of all three appointments late Friday after a voice mail message was mistakenly left on the answering machine of a former board member.

In the message provided to Patch, Pat Foerster, an education policy adviser in the governor's appointment office, names the appointments.

It is clear from the message that Foerster believed she was leaving the message for Larry Schmidt, president of the county board of education.