This guide, one of four, is a product of the Project on Social Architecture in Education, initiated to find out what it takes to develop a program and a working social system for a new school. The project began with interviews with school planners and consultants, then moved to the study of six new innovative public schools for a two-and-a-half year period. The four guides are the result of creating learning materials from the field reports and case studies of the research team. They are intended to be helpful to anyone whose mission is to create a new program, a newly opened building, or a radically redesigned school setting. The first guide helps orient the reader to the planning enterprise. After dealing with such issues as the composition of the planning group and planning skills, it sets out the primary planning tasks for a new school. The guides consist of readings to be done individually and exercises to be done individually and/or with a group. The exercises are open-ended and self-analyzing. The materials in each guide are divided into separate modules that may be used independently of one another. Case study illustrations have been printed in italics and boxed to highlight them for easy retrieval. The last section of each guide is a resources piece that lists all references used in the text. (Author/MLF)