Arlethea Williams-DHS Principal

I went to college with the plan to become a medical examiner, I’m sure part of that is the fact that I’m an introvert. There are times, considering the irony of what I do for a living, where I don’t feel like being bothered with people. Before CSI got big and all that, I was always intrigued by medical examination, so that’s what I wanted to do. My sophomore year in college after I had actually shadowed a medical examiner, who happened to be a lady because at that time there weren’t many of those I am sure there are many more now, not because of the visit but it just hit me, I don’t want to do this. I was a biology major and I had done research before, some summer research at the CDC, a few colleges, so I thought about that. So I thought “Oh, I’ll go get my PHD. But at the beginning of my senior year I said “I don’t want to do research, I don’t want to apply for grants”. So, I actually graduated from college which is here, city of Atlanta, not knowing what I wanted to do and I ended up subbing and through subbing I decided I wanted to teach. Now we’ll say this, when I was probably about your age, because I loved math, my math teacher said “why don’t you teach, you have a story to tell” and I told her, I don’t want to teach, they don’t make enough money. But no, not at all, I didn’t want to teach.

Gail Rothman, Executive Director of Decatur Education Foundation

My husband and I always dreamed of having our life in one place, no commute, so its really amazing to have  my whole life really within two miles, I live in Winnona Park with my family and right now I have a kid who has graduated, a kid who is a senior at the high school and my daughter is in sixth grade at Renfroe and my husband teaches at the high school so at any given time of the day we are all within like a mile of each other which is great for forgotten lunches and permission slips. I do a lot of dropping things off at the school.  But for DEF it means I have a different understanding of how the school system works. I professionally work with the superintendent and teachers and principals but because husband is a teacher I also have that connection with them personally. For example, because I am married to a teacher I understand how much money they spend out of pocket and when I took over DEF we used to give grant money we used to make teachers spend the money and submit receipts to us and get reimbursed but because I have this sort of understanding of that that is a burden on a teacher’s family so we changed so we give teachers the money upfront and then collect the reports later of how they spent the money. I work really hard to make sure teachers don’t have to put money out of their own pockets because there is just an assumption that that happens and I don think that’s right partly because I have sort of a personal connection with my husband being a teacher for the past 15 years.

James Stiggers

"My favorite thing about working here in Decatur is that I get to meet a lot of great people. I've been doing this for 31 years so I've seen Decatur grow, the traffic has changed, the buildings, I've seen people come and go. So it's great. There's a lot of festivals here, and a lot of opportunity to come out here and enjoy my own peace. My favorite thing is that I get to build relationships with a lot of people, and I get to hang out with those people in my off time. Even the kids sometimes, I see them at the park in my off time, and they say 'Hey you're the mail guy!'"