The traditional position of boards of education is being challenged by Federal programs and laws, private business, urbanization, the civil rights movement, teacher militancy, and student activism. If school boards are to survive as viable institutions, they must make some response and accommodation to these challenges. These accommodations must include the reorganization of small districts into larger units, realistic plans of decentralization in the cities, greater recognition of the Negro and other minorities in school government, elimination of paternalistic attitudes toward teachers, more competent student relations, and a unified demand for adequate school funds at the State level. If accommodations can be made and if boards can recognize that they do not have complete control but that they may have considerable influence, the future of the school board is not without hope. On the other hand, if boards continue to operate as usual, the school board will be found obsolete and some other mechanism for local school governance will have to be invented. (TT)