On a frigid Martin Luther King Day in 2008, some 800 parents and youth from neighborhoods throughout New York City rallied at St. Paul's Church in lower Manhattan, and marched to the headquarters of the city's Department of Education to launch a citywide middle grades school improvement effort. The rally was organized by the New York City Coalition for Educational Justice (CEJ), a consortium of neighborhood-based organizing groups. CEJ's work was coordinated and supported by the Community Organizing and Engagement Program (CO&E) of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. This article analyzes how CO&E's school improvement work in New York City evolved from supporting neighborhood organizing to improve local schools, to building regional coalitions of these neighborhood organizing groups, to coordinating CEJ, a citywide coalition of these groups formed to advance systemic solutions to poor school performance across the New York City school system. (Contains 10 notes.)