In the old days, when someone wrote an e-mail or a letter to the schools chancellor, a clerical worker in the chancellor’s correspondence unit would forward the message directly to the closest thing the Department of Education has to the Bermuda Triangle: the district offices.

Not anymore.

About a year ago, the schools chancellor, Joel Klein, quietly renamed the office that handles his correspondence and gave it a new set of responsibilities. The new unit, called the Chancellor’s Strategic Response Group, is a “team of problem-solvers,” its director, Terry Bowman, said.

“I wanted to make sure that when parents wrote in they got responses – that they didn’t just get shuffled through the system,” Mr. Klein said.

The seven-member team works on the first floor of the Tweed Courthouse, on Chambers Street. In a corner of the office, on a stand-alone dry-erase board, “The Big List” is written in colorful marker.

The first rule is “Everyone gets a Response.” That’s a lot of responses.

Mr. Klein responds to some of his own mail. But even once he writes back to some of the principals, teachers, and parents who contact him, there are still between 1,000 and 1,200 messages a month left for the Strategic Response Group, not including condolences, thank-you notes, and invitations. The majority of the letters, e-mails, and phone calls come from the parents of students who attend public schools. Other messages come from students, teachers, public officials, and citizens of places as far from the city as Arizona and as close as Long Island.

Mr. Bowman said some of the messages are compliments about programs or policies that are working in the schools. Most messages, though, are complaints.

“Education is serious business to people,” he said. “The majority are serious problems for people that need solving.”

When someone contacts the chancellor’s office, the Strategic Response Group enters the complaint into a newly developed computer system. If someone sends a letter, someone in the office scans the letter and makes it part of the electronic records system.

“Rather than writers going through a loot of hoops, complaints are tracked,” Mr. Bowman said. “It’s about accountability, responsiveness, and consistency.”

About half of the messages that come through the office are pointed questions about local issues at specific schools. Those messages are forwarded to one of 10 regional offices, and there are follow-ups to make sure the region responds.

The other half, which deal with central education department policies, is divvied up between the chancellor’s strategic responders.

People ask frequently about transportation to and from school, human resources, and registration. Students’ questions tend to be less predictable. Public-school students have written in with a range of complaints, from excessively heavy backpacks to insufficient supplies of candy in school vending machines. Some have requested lighter loads of homework, and others have demanded more.

One of the strategic responders, Taneka Miller, said she received a letter from the student vice president at a Brooklyn middle school who conducted a poll finding that the favorite lunch food is beef patties. The vice president asked that the patties be on the menu more frequently.

The office also has to handle special one-of-a-kind requests. Ms. Miller, for example, handled a request from a mother whose daughter had been beaten up on the way home from school. After a few conversations with the mother and personnel at the regional office, Ms. Miller helped the student secure an expedited safety transfer.

One of her colleagues, Thackston Lundy, helped an Ohio theater group get permission to perform a play written by a public-school theater teacher about the September 11 attacks.

Mr. Lundy has also been working with other people in the central offices of the education department to create a section of the department Web site where listings about internships and scholarships – many of which filter through the Strategic Response Group – could be posted.

“It’s a matter of kind of connecting the dots,” he said. “I think our goal is to know a little bit about a lot of things.”

The office also deals with some quirkier issues.

For example, it helped secure an honorary diploma for a 90-year-old woman who went through the public school system when she was a girl but never received her diploma. The family was so pleased with the help it received that it sent the Strategic Response Group flowers and balloons.

It has also helped find money at the department to pay for funeral expenses of some public-school children from impoverished families.

Mr. Bowman said there is no strict timeline for responding. More urgent matters are handled first, he said, but added: “We wouldn’t want anything to languish, certainly not any more than a month.”

The unit’s budget is $350,000, about the same as annual spending on the old correspondence unit.