Four keynote ideas can help partnerships form between communities and their schools. The first keynote is a new "social contract" for education in each community, based on agreement on values, school objectives, and group roles. The second keynote is the "public good." There exists a breakdown of community, a loss of the sense of the public good; it can be rebuilt, however, through youth programs, parent and citizen councils, and citywide organizations and public interest groups. The third keynote involves the reawakening of the idea of "mutual aid" instead of selfishness. Educators should see parents and community members as resources and should design educational programs in which learners take more responsibility for their own and others' learning. "The Home-School Connection," from the Institute for Responsive Education (IRE), reports on such mutual aid. Mutual aid can also include resource and service exchange with community agencies. The final keynote, "shared power," involves increasing parents' and citizens' roles in educational policy development and decision-making. Recent IRE findings on districts with declining resources indicate the community needs to be integrated into the formal procedures of district governance, not just manipulated. Four criteria help identify such integration. (RW)