As neoliberal reformers are appointed to manage the "crisis" of U.S. public schools, their power has become a pressing reality for grassroots movements in education. I examine how the Small Schools movement in Oakland, California--just as the school district fell under state administrative control--employed rites of passage to socialize a grassroots identity: the reform officer. These rites represent a form of grassroots cultural power that disrupts the conditions of neoliberal domination.