This study investigated how teachers described current decision making structures, culture, and the power/micropolitics of their work, examining how they used their agency to accomplish work and make decisions together under Florida's reform. Data came from interviews with 1996 and 1997 elementary educators selected as teachers of the year. The interviews addressed their perspectives on site-based decision making structures within their work contexts and relationships, examining: formal and informal work processes that led to decision making, their definitions of teacher expertise, power relationships between different groups, and how they used their personal power in school. Overall, teacher leaders were able to envision the broader impact of decisions made by administrators and teachers. Those who exerted the most agency had the most empowering principals and the least disempowerment in their work contexts. They were respected and valued by colleagues and principals. They worked within and across school boundaries and structures to establish social linkages and networks among their peers and within the community. Their stories illustrated how six empowerment/power dimensions (autonomy, political efficacy and expertise, responsibility and accountability, collegiality and status, resources, and hierarchical relations) appeared under the framework of structure, power, and culture. (Contains 52 references.) (SM)