Mounds View, a K-12 district serving 11,400 students in the St. Paul and Minneapolis (Minnesota) suburbs, used to experience prolonged, hostile negotiations between administrators and the teachers' association. After a particularly bitter round of bargaining in 1984, the district began searching for less adversarial approaches. The district hired a consultant to help staff unload bitter feelings, solve problems as colleagues, not combatants, and begin trusting each other. This paper describes Mound View's Professional Council, which grew out of the district's desire for authentic teacher/administrator collaboration. From the beginning, the council agreed to create an environment of mutual respect, cooperation, and teacher involvement; to promote open discussion, study, and resolution of professional concerns; to specify membership of four teachers and four administrators; to give veto power only to the superintendent or the executive board of the teachers' association; and to pay council members as much as head coaches of major sports. After outlining agenda items and suggested improvements when bargaining for a new contract, the paper summarizes some observations about the council's progress. First, American public education needs shared decision-making by teachers and administrators and teacher judgments to shape school goals and daily operations. Empowering teachers is the challenge of this decade; teachers need to be treated and rewarded as professionals. The new system does not resolve all problems or obviate the need for administrators. The new leadership of the 1990s will hopefully blend assertiveness with participation and practice the value of teamwork and trust. (MLH)