This issue of a publication informing health policy and health care services in California in support of Proposition 10, the Children and Families Act, focuses on building community support for preparing children to enter school ready to learn through the use of Proposition 10 Commissions. These Commissions would help ensure that school readiness programs result in improved child outcomes by investing in neighborhood-level decision-making models that support sustained community development. The publication delineates characteristics of community decision making that facilitate resident and parent decision making, and describes the use of community decision making in national, state, and local programs. Also described are roles for residents and parents in decision making. The Canadian Better Beginnings, Better Futures Project and the federal Healthy Start program are presented as examples of early childhood initiatives leading to positive health outcomes, a more engaged community, improved services and conditions, and greater community capacity. The California Healthy Start program is highlighted as an example of a program using community-generated, collaborative strategies for providing more comprehensive, integrated services linked to schools. The publication then discusses challenges to neighborhood-level decision making, including parent/resident availability, professional social service culture, power and authority issues, language and culture issues, time to build trust and mutual respect, and the process versus product challenge. The publication concludes with a discussion of early lessons learned by the Children and Families First Commission of Ventura County. (Lists 7 Web site resources and contains 45 endnotes.) (KB)