This volume attempts to document ways in which several communities have dealt with the problems of declining school enrollments. Each case study outlines some type of public participation in the task of adjusting to population changes and fiscal pressures. The first chapter supplies an introductory overview of issues related to declining enrollment and school closures. The second chapter describes consolidation of rural school districts and explains the concerns of the citizens who resist it. Chapter 3 chronicles the crises arising from twenty years of shrinking enrollment in Salt Lake City. Chapter 4 records the resistance of Skokie, Illinois, residents to the closing of a school. Three different stories of school closure in California's Bay Area (in Palo Alto, Berkeley, and San Francisco) are told in chapter 5. The sixth chapter concerns declining enrollment in Lexington, Massachusetts, an "educational boom town." Chapter 7 is about how politics and parent participation intertwined with desegregation issues in Boston. The final chapter offers a plan of action urging citizens to become involved in solving the problems of declining enrollment and shrinking resources. (JM)