This case study describes the Imaginative Educational Cooperation (IEC) Project, a program that focused on organizational development and participative decision making in two city schools. The IEC was one of nine programs chosen by the Documentation and Technical Assistance (DTA) Project as representing exemplary strategies for problem solving in urban schools. The DTA study originally intended to examine both the failure of previous IEC technical assistance efforts at Jensen Junior High School, and ongoing conflict between the office of the superintendent and Washington Elementary School. However, a decision by the central office to close the latter school in 1976, as part of a countywide desegregation plan, shifted most of the project's attention to that school. In addition to outlining aspects of the IEC organizational development plan and describing efforts to keep the elementary school open, this paper discusses four areas: (1) increasing decision making by parents; (2) improving uses of outside resources; (3) follow through to children; and (4) building collaborative school-community governance structures. Special attention is given to the role of the school principal, staff interrelationships, and contact between staff and parents. The paper also considers implications of the IEC project for building a sustained capacity for problem solving at the local school level. (GC)