This article describes an attempt by a group of Harvard and M.I.T. graduate students to use organization development methods for the first time in a large urban school system. The group concluded that (1) organization development consultants must be aware of the different environment within which large city school systems operate, (2) such an environment permits the school system to become power entrenched, (3) the struggle for power becomes the key organizational phenomenon, (4) the consultant must choose a method other than collaboration with the power conservative organizational leadership, (5) the change potential of both lower-level participants in the school system and groups outside the system could be harnessed so that environmental forces become more turbulent and less easily controlled by the top of the organization, (6) structural changes must accompany such a method, and (7) work is needed on the entry contract negotiation phase of organization development as used in urban school systems. (Author/LLR)