Private groups bidding to support schools under Chancellor Joel Klein’s reorganization of the bureaucracy are puzzled about what the new role will entail.

After a meeting yesterday during which the new CEO of the Partnership Support Organizations, JoEllen Lynch, answered a host of questions from private organizations — which will provide one of three support options principals can choose under the new system — many prospective bidders said they were still confused.

“I don’t think they can picture what it’s going to look like,” a representative of an Indiana-based nonprofit, the Hope Foundation, Mark Delaney, said after the meeting, referring to Department of Education officials. “It’s like they’re building the plane as they’re flying it.”

Ms. Lynch, who previously served as the director in the office of Multiple Pathways to Graduation, said the vagueness was on purpose.

“They’re used to us prescribing the support that we need,” she said in an interview. “We’re asking people to tell us what they’re good at.”

The result of the bidding process is expected to be a wide array of choices for principals to choose from, she said. One of the only overarching guidelines is that organizations agree to act as coaches to help principals make decisions about what services they may need, but not necessarily provide those services themselves or dictate what choices principals should make.

“I feel challenged by it,” the director of the Center for Educational Partnerships at Fordham University, Anita Batisti, said. “I think the reason it’s a little vague is that it’s a work in progress.”

Mr. Klein has said that he expected the department to choose only nonprofits for the job, but at least six for-profit companies attended yesterday’s meeting.