School-community collaborations are developing in many cities to respond to the escalating needs of minority and other disadvantaged students. School districts in New York City have developed collaborative programs with health care services, youth agencies, neighborhood family service centers, community organizations and parent groups. Critics argue that schools compound their academic ineffectiveness by attempting to meet their students' non-instructional needs. Supporters argue that schools have no choice because effective teaching and learning is impossible when students' pre-instructional needs remain unattended, and that schools are the only institutions societally positioned to mandate and achieve the daily attendance of all children. Advantages include the following: (1) provision of more extensive student services; (2) focus on school improvement; (3) reduction of the gap between school culture and home-neighborhood culture; and (4) development of a new comprehensive community-based institution with the local school and its instructional focus at the core of a wide range of services. Problems include the following: (1) district-level management's lack of experience; (2) a tendency to work only with traditional agencies to the exclusion of minority group organizations and agencies offering controversial services; (3) power struggles between administrators and collaborators; (4) disparities between school-level implementation and district-level decisions; (5) institutional rigidity; (6) a too narrow focus on vocationalism; and (7) the danger of creating an atmosphere of clientism. (FMW)