This article discusses insights from an ethnographic study of local governance practices in the Canton of Bern, Switzerland, under changing policy conditions. Recent reforms introduced and strengthened the position of head teachers, enhanced the responsibility of the municipalities and introduced new quality management procedures in local supervision. Long-time participant observation in the meetings of the different local governing bodies in four case studies revealed not only new modes of governance practices but also changing relations between the governing bodies within a municipality. By "studying up, down and across" institutional borders and hierarchies, we recognised that as a consequence of the reforms local school governance emerges as contested field in which head teachers, school boards and municipal councils try to expand their influence and to contain those of related bodies. By their enactments of policy reforms, local bodies negotiate rationalities between traditional public supervision and professional management of schools.