Fig. 6 A mother watches her son play basketball in front of Oakman.
Fig. 7 Residents of the community outdoors, mowing lawns, and talking. Neighborhood members talk
about feeling a safe close knit community.
This created a loving neighborhood community seen in the pictures, which were captured by Google in the
summer of August 2013. Oakman was what every school should be. The neighborhood was what every
neighborhood should be.
With everyone coming to Oakman for community activities, especially after the closure of Parker
Elementary, a general education school three blocks away, it was natural that community concerns would be
raised among the parents in Oakman’s open atmosphere.
Active in the Oakman community were a few vocal parent advocates.
They were not a members of the powerful Coalition of stake holders calling on Snyder to appoint a Board
over all funding to educational institutions in Detroit. However, as active parents of children with many
differing abilities, these parents tried to attend all community school events. They ran or were involved in
many of the parent email list serves. In 2011, when Roberts came in, many had also been appointed to the
positions where they taught other parents to speak up for their children.
When Sharlonda Buckman’s, federally funded, Detroit Parent Network gave notice of leadership elections
by email during inclement weather and some recall barely making it to the event, but they spoke up,
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