The idea of the community school has a deep history and an abiding resonance. This paper will begin by exploring the discourse of school and community as realized in some key expressions (Robert Owen, Henry Morris) and in some key manifestations (the modern comprehensive school). It will seek to provide a historical analysis of the vicissitudes of the concept of community school including present forms of its realization. At the same time, the paper will seek to propose some ways of thinking about the school and the idea of community in relation to those aspects of contemporary political philosophy that propose a break with modernist ideas of identity and community - in particular the neo-Marxist concept of Empire as defined by Hardt and Negri. The thesis of Empire proposes a new way of thinking about relations of power and the institutions of governance. The contemporary school will be explored as an institution of governance (in both senses of governing and being governed). The concept of community will be examined critically in relation to a sociological analysis of difference and identity as well as in relation to 'flexible and fluctuating networks' of control (Hardt and Negri). The discursive data for this paper is based on a research project funded by the National Assembly for Wales into schools and governing bodies. The specific forms of expression given to ideas of school and community in this context that arise form this research will be set against the wider European context as well as the increasingly globalized concept of the global. What is left in all this of the idea of the community school, of the school as a focal point for community life and for the expression and realization of community will?