When created and operated appropriately, school-site councils can be a very useful component of school renewal. Councils are difficult to create, since members must shift roles, compromise strongly held beliefs, and invest considerable time, energy, and know-how. Advantages of group decision making are bringing diverse experience and expertise to a problem, facilitating implementation, and stressing the representative whole over single strident or persistent voices. To ensure effectiveness, school councils must focus on important issues and use time wisely. Principals must learn to share authority, or traditional power relationships will merely be furthered. Principals who exercise power through, rather than over, others create conditions favoring staff cooperation to achieve valued outcomes. Effective site councils begin with adequate training and are characterized by diversity, open communications, and accountability to the school board and the superintendent. Districts should develop policies specifying the relationship between the district and site councils, the councils' place in the strategic district plan, and permissible exemptions from policy and procedures. School-site councils are grassroots, reform-oriented organizations whose effectiveness depends on people's skilful and committed participation in the democratic process. (MLH)