Through the late 1970s the idea was expressed that community education provides a structure for citizen involvement in local decision-making processes and that democratic processes would be reintroduced at the community level through a new commitment to it. Minzey and LeTarte proposed the concept of process--to develop a community process of citizen involvement in a more democratic decision-making system. Community education has been located, for the most part, however, in a closed bureaucracy--the local school system. Perhaps Minzey and LeTarte went too far in their claims of process, and community education is capable of the following: making better use of the capital and knowledge resources of the local school system, aiding in the development of an educational system comprehensive in its response to community needs, fostering interaction between schools and community agencies toward resolution of community problems, and serving as an open area of the school bureaucracy. Three projects in rural communities in Mid-Atlantic states were studied to see if community educational projects moved toward process as they aged. Findings supported the conclusion that the community educational programs were basically bureaucratically structured as part of the local school system. However, the findings also showed that community educational programs served to open the school's bureaucracy by suing the local schools for classes for all citizens and that the projects cooperated with other agencies to provide resources and programs. (YLB)