Ashley Michele also cited a breakdown in community spirit as the reason her family left the city. “My parents,” she said, “moved me out [of Detroit] because of (those) exact things,” said Michele, who has since returned to the city. Her parents chose to send her to school in Southfield, and then Farmington, in Oakland County.

Dr. Truman Hudson, a Detroit businessman, identifies with that parental struggle. “I got tired of playing the school shuffle,” he said of his children. An inability to acquire a stable education for his children drove his family to buy a house outside the city.

“Education is probably the most disheartening part of being in Detroit,” agreed Watson. “I am a DPS [Detroit Public School] grad, K -12. Up through last year my daughter was in DPS. I get one chance to get it right with her.”

With her one chance, Watson decided to send her daughter to Oakland County.

“It’s my desire to bring her back when there is something to offer,” Watson said. The school her daughter used to go to “is an insult to our children… She deserves a room that doesn’t have mold and mushroom growing in it.”

“When you go across 8 mile, it doesn’t get much better,” adds Janice Rowley, a language arts teacher at Detroit’s Renaissance High School, referencing the road that divides the city from suburban counties. “Michigan, the state, has a problem.”

“I don’t think, as a community, we work together. It’s not just the teacher,” added Kiarra Ambrose. She has worked in DPS for 10 years, and said she has found that with teachers and students constantly flowing in and out of schools, there is “no sense of community...As a whole, if we don’t do a great job of working together, the school systems will fail. If the only education your child gets is as school, then your child isn’t getting an education.”

“Once the public schools [went downhill], it took away a lot of dreams…” current resident Annjell Williams reminisced. She can recall a time in her neighborhood when residents had access to a bookmobile and skate rink. “In the 70s, we had community… I feel like it’s all going to come back,” she adds. “It’s just going to take us to reinforce it.”

A Detroit love affair

Detroit’s struggles, which Michele said drove her parents away decades ago, are the same reasons she has returned to the city. “Some of us know about resources and things like that,” she said. “I may be able to help my community, because I know of those resources.”

She urged conversation participants to invest in their neighborhoods. “Go on buildingdetroit.org (the city’s website for home purchases)...They have homes for $1,000…”