Erin Duryea Gilsbach

 Erin D. Gilsbach is the Executive Director of EdLaw Interactive and a practicing attorney with the PA-based law firm of Steckel and Stopp.  She is an experienced speaker and writer at the state and national levels on current trends and important issues regarding school law and education and a highly-skilled professional development . Gilsbach has extensive experience working with schools and providing proactive professional development programs on legally-defensible practices.  She has provided legal representation and/or professional development to over 150 public, private and charter schools, and she currently serves as President of the PA School Boards Association (PSBA) Solicitor’s Association and a member of the Board of Directors of the National School Boards Association (NSBA) Council of School Attorneys.  She is also a frequent writer and presenter with PSBA, NSBA, NSBA’s Council of School Attorneys (COSA), and the National Business Institute (NBI).  She has been selected as 2018’s Distinguished Speaker by the Missouri Council of Administrators of Special Education.

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Recent speaking engagements include the 2016 and 2017 national Education Law Association annual conferences in Orlando and San Diego; the 2015, 2016, and 2017 NSBA/COSA annual conferences in Nashville, Boston, and Denver; the NSBA Council of School Attorneys School Law Practice Seminar in Portland, OR; the North Dakota School Boards Association Annual Conference in Bismarck, ND; a National Business Institute live-panel session in Eau Claire, WI.  The 2018 Missouri Council of Administrators of Special Education Law Conference in Columbia, MO; the 2018 LRP Annual National Institute in Dallas, and the 2018 NSBA Annual Conference in San Antonio. 

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She has authored articles on school law topics for numerous state and national publications and organizations, served as legal consultant on a legal reference for school nurses, and is currently authoring a handbook on school health services for LRP Publications that is scheduled to be published in the fall of 2018.  In addition to presenting, she designs the content and curriculum for many EdLaw Interactive programs, and she designs and presents school law webinars for a number of national webinar providers, including NSBA/COSA.

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Atty. Gilsbach emphasizes a proactive approach to legal defensibility for schools by helping them to create procedures, administrative regulations and board policies that are developed not only upon consideration of statutory and regulatory requirements but also the best practices and common pitfalls found within the facts of applicable caselaw. Voted a Rising Star Attorney by her peers in Superlawyers and Philadelphia magazines for the past five years, Atty. Gilsbach began her career as a public high school English teacher. Prior to working in private practice, she served for two and a half years at the Pennsylvania Department of Education's Office of Chief Counsel. Atty. Gilsbach received a B.A. in English with a minor in Secondary Education from Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania. She received her Juris Doctorate from Penn State University Dickinson School of Law.