Community participation has become an important aspect of almost any change efforts in public schools in recent years. The movement has waxed and waned through the decades since the Common School, but is enjoying renewed interest with the emphasis placed on involving stakeholders in systemic change efforts. Typically, community participation has taken the form of seeking "buy-in" of parents and community members. The shape of the new systems that are being designed by current restructuring teams will be determined largely by the makeup of the team itself. Where multiple perspectives are represented, the team must grapple with diversity but the product will be more likely to represent the views of many instead of a select group. After an exploration of the relevant literature on systemic change, community participation, race, gender, and class, this paper examines membership patterns exhibited in six middle schools seeking to increase parental and community participation. The study found that minority and father populations were underrepresented and drew implications for the impact of this lack of balance on school design teams. There was in this study a pervasive lack of racial, gender, and class balance in school change team membership and participation. Further understanding of non-participating populations and research focusing on that question should be undertaken. Those empowered teams that already exist should be studied for patterns of participation, patterns of attrition, and similarities across resultant designs coming from teams of similar makeup. Contains 39 references. (Author/DK)