Teacher empowerment means that teachers participate in policy decisions and have real decision-making responsibilities in the direction of their own professional activities. A description is given of an intensive 2-week, 5 hour per day instructional and workshop summer inservice program. The primary objective of this program was to develop an organizational framework for faculty involvement in developing a policy for a program for the gifted students of a small school district. The conceptual framework was designed as a hierarchical structure comprised of six working committees. While this appeared to be a normal administrative schema for decision making via a committee design, the structural and procedural format for the committees was unusual. A description is given of the structure and function of the six committees, how they arrived at recommendations for action, and how they interacted with each other. When this participatory organizational model was intact, the proposed gifted program was the topic of deliberation and debate of 95 percent of the faculty of that school district. (JD)