This article argues that school reform initiatives - particularly those aiming at high schools -- have greater chances of staying made when the community actively participates as an empowered change agent. This historical analysis of the Mexican American parent community involvement in the Salinas high school district, in California, provides the context for answering some of the questions around the roles a community plays as an external force for school renewal, and the lasting effects of such protagonism. This agency, the paper argues, is important because of the centrality given to public education as sustenance of local control and of democratic political discourses, particularly when a community has traditionally been defined in deficit terms by those in power.