More than half of the parent leaders selected to serve on the city’s 34 community education councils did not return to serve this school year and another 7% have dropped off since September, the Association of New York City Education Councils said yesterday.

Many parents said they opted out due to frustration with the bureaucracy, the lack of any real power, and a hulking 33-page financial disclosure requirement. There are now 70 vacancies across the city, the Department of Education said.

The 11-member councils, created to give parents a voice in running the schools, were instituted last year after Mayor Bloomberg dismantled the old school boards. Under state guidelines, each council is required to include nine-parent members elected by the heads of parent associations and two representatives appointed by the borough president.

“The very strong outspoken parent leaders with the institutional memory are leaving in droves due to the frustration they’ve come across in these councils,” the founder of the Association of New York City Education Councils, Carmen Colon, said.

Only about 141 of the 337 original parent members returned this year, Ms. Colon said in an e-mail distributed yesterday.

The director of the office of parent engagement at the Department of Education, Jemina Bernard, called the numbers “inaccurate and inflammatory.” She said the department was not able to provide its own statistics but said they are working with a third party elections monitor to gather that information.

According to the Department of Education Web site, only four of the councils had full membership as of November 22. Each panel should also include a high school senior who lives in the district, but only eight councils currently have one onboard.

Several parents interviewed said they clashed with the Department of Education after they were asked to fill out a hefty financial disclosure packet at the end of last school year. Some opted to leave and said the packet was overly invasive considering the members were not elected officials.

Ms. Colon was ousted from District 13 in Fort Greene after she refused to fill out the papers.

Other parents said they were generally fed up with the council and felt that their hands were tied.

A parent of two children in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Juan Ramos, joined the District 15 council this year. During training over the summer he was handed a 700-page copy of Roberts Rules of Order and told to read up.

“They told us that it was professional to operate under those rules … that’s ridiculous,” he said. Just getting on the council was an ordeal for Mr. Ramos, who was originally disqualified because he worked for a nonprofit agency that does business with the Department of Education. He said getting anything done or even getting into the schools can be difficult. He said he is not sure if he will return next year.

Borough presidents have also had a difficult time finding members to appoint.

“They want members who have real qualifications and expertise, and the people who have those qualities are often not interested in serving on a board where the perception is that they have no influence,” said Regina Weiss, a spokeswoman for the president of Brooklyn, Marty Markowitz.

Councils hold monthly meetings and review school budgets, but their role is strictly advisory.

Not all parents feel let down by the boards.

“I feel like we’ve done some good thing,” a parent of two children and a member of the council District 15, Mary-Powel Thomas, said. “Nobody has to give us information or keep us in the loop. On the other hand, we are not professional educators, so I go back and forth on what the ideal situation would be.”