A CPO sub-committee focusing on the schools budget has yet to formulate ideas for possible ways to reduce the projected shortfall, Hart says.

"Perhaps we just need to get more money as a school system," says Hart, who suggests increases in state education funding.

E. Denise Simmons, vice chair of the School Committee, says that if CPO submits its suggestions for the budget in writing, "it would certainly be considered."

Another CPO subcommittee is currently reviewing a draft of a report, to be issued Feb. 25, prepared by four consultants hired by the School Committee.

Included in the report are suggestions to close or merge some of the city's elementary schools.

There are now roughly 900 empty seats in Cambridge public schools, according to Hart.

Approximately 8,000 students attend the 14 Cambridge public high school, including the city's only public high school, Cambridge Rindge and Latin.

The report also assesses the success of the system's school-choice program, which was designed to bring racial balance to the schools. The program allows parents to choose which schools their children will attend.

School assignments are then made based on parents' choices while keeping each school's racial composition within certain parameters, Hart says.

Roughly 20 parent organizations exist in Cambridge, including Parent Teacher Associations at most of the schools, says Simmons.

But those groups are all based in specific schools, while CPO is the only parents organization with members throughout the city, according to Simmons.

"I went to their first meeting," Simmons says. "It looks like they are an invigorated and empowered group of individuals."

Hart says the group formed with the hope that it would be important in the future, even after the current problems facing the system have passed.

"Irrespective of these specific issues this year, we need a citywide parents organization," Hart said. "It becomes urgent as we have these major things on the agenda this year."

Hart, a lobbyist on Beacon Hill, is a mother of three, including a sixth-grader at the Agassiz School.

Sullivan is the mother of a kindergarten, second-grade and fourth-grade student at the King School, where she also works as a temporary assistant teacher.