Although parent school councils are the archetypal arrangement for engaging parents in school improvement planning, their effectiveness is negligible when it comes to building parents' capacity for and confidence in educational decision-making. Using Arnstein's ladder of citizen participation, this qualitative case study investigated the nature and degree of parents' participation on six school community councils (SCCs) in Saskatchewan, Canada. Focus groups and interviews with SCC parent members, and school and district leaders were the chief data sources. In most schools, the SCC structure did not dislodge time-honoured barriers that restricted parents' influence on extracurricular issues. A conceptual examination of participation affords a process-oriented understanding of parent involvement that complements the existing focus on the factors that impact school council effectiveness as an outcome.