Founding Solomon Schechter School of Westchester was founded in 1966 with twenty-two students and two teachers in the basement of Temple Israel Center. Rabbi Max Gelb, the school's founder, guided the school with his wife, founding principal Leah Gelb. By the end of the 1970s, enrollment reached 150 and the kindergarten was housed in a converted home adjacent to the main building. It is named after
Solomon Schechter, who founded the
United Synagogue of America and was the architect of the American
Conservative Jewish movement.
Expansion in White Plains In 1979, with financial support from M. Mac Schwebel and others, the school leased the Rosedale Elementary School campus on Dellwood Road in White Plains, and two years later purchased the campus. In 1980, Rabbi Gelb and Mrs. Gelb stepped down, and Dr. Elliot Spiegel was appointed headmaster. It was Dr. Spiegel who charted the school's future course, introducing innovative education programs and transforming Schechter Westchester into a premier conservative Jewish day school. In 1989, with support from
Joseph S. Gruss, a fourth building was constructed on the White Plains campus to help accommodate the demands of Westchester's largest Jewish day school.
Name change In 2016, the Solomon Schechter schools system merged with Prizmah, an interdenominational Jewish Day School network. The Westchester school thereupon disaffiliated intself with the network, but briefly retained the name. On July 1, 2019, it changed its name to
The Leffell School, after Lisa and Michael Leffell, the latter a past president of the school's board of trustees. == Tuition ==