Any plan to create a communications/governance structure to empower stakeholders must address several questions: rationale, potential advantages and disadvantages, problems to be considered, format, committee structure and responsibilities, and evaluation techniques. Includes 10 references. (MLH)

Site-based management can be effective way to empower teachers and communities to improve schools. Success will ensue only by involving entire staff in change process, realigning power structure, and using time effectively. Third goal can be accomplished by rearranging school day to allow morning teacher meetings and 10:00-4:00 student attendance…

To increase parental involvement, Mount Carmel High School (Poway, California) has adopted strategic-planning change model. Successful strategic plans are connected to school mission and core values, gain staff support, remain open to input from all parties, build trust and rapport among participants, ensure open communication with stakeholders,…

Principals of site-based managed schools face numerous special-education program implementation challenges, such as appropriate committee compositions, inconsistent service delivery decisions across schools, interschool isolation, deflection of advocates, and policy guidance problems. Principals are ill-trained for inclusion and special-education…

A study conducted in an Illinois metropolitan school district explored four dimensions of school-based management implementation: school leadership, school climate, student achievement, and community involvement. Survey data from 176 teachers, 42 parents, and 6 administrators revealed that length of program involvement positively influenced…

In Kentucky, where school-based decision making is legally mandated for all public schools, appreciable policy and decision-making powers are vested in SBDM school councils. Since 1990, educators have learned some valuable lessons: reform policies need early implementation guidelines; decentralization mandates create control problems for state…

The key to our future students' success is educators' ability to transcend their immediate ego-protected environments and openly seek, accept, incorporate, and publicly acknowledge expertise and opinions of others. Principals advocating benefits of collaborative decision making must show tolerance and encourage a wide variety of management,…