One purpose of this paper was to describe the present process of machine government and private-regarding practices in local school government. Another purpose was to theorize from these data, based on selected conceptual notions, about the political process in educational governance. Data for the study came from a Pennsylvania superintendent whose school district was involved in charges of school board member corruption. The paper offers a descriptive account of the community, the political machine, and the amount of money involved, as well as how the system operated. The major conclusion stemming from the data, is that private-regarding machine government still exists in the governance of public education, and it can, and often does, produce corruption in that government. Further, it appeared that as corruption occurred in the districts mentioned, it was intricately entwined with machine politics and corruption at all levels of government. The paper theorizes that when an electorate becomes dissatisfied with a machine-type school board, it can be more effective in changing the board through the elective process than it can be when dissatisfied and confronted with a reform-type school board structure. (Author/LD)