Discussed are some decision-making influences on the attitudes of New York City parents toward school decentralization. The Mass Media Committee of the Center for Urban Education maintains a representative panel of parents from whom information about communication experiences and responses to educational issues can be gathered. Telephone interviews elicited the panel's responses to a number of facets of the Ocean Hill-Brownsville school crisis and to the decentralization question. Both white parents favoring decentralization and Negro parents in communities where the leaders support decentralization showed little agreement on how "parent influence" can achieve better education for the children. Supporters of decentralization are not demanding parental control. These "suggestive" poll findings imply that decentralization must be debated as an educational issue with specific application to the children. (NH)