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.