It began several years ago with “pilot schools.” Simply put, these are public schools where staff voted to take control at the building level over important decisions on budgeting, curriculum, staffing, scheduling and other matters. The schools enjoy this flexibility while maintaining a commitment to serve public school children with educators who are district employees and members of the Boston Teachers Union (BTU). It’s a model that has worked well: The number of pilot schools continues to grow, and student achievement at these schools typically surpasses regular charter schools operating in the city.

Now, BTU and the district are teaming up again to explore another model of cooperation called the “discovery school.” It builds on the pilot school approach, preserving partial autonomy in the areas of budget and curriculum, while keeping staffing under the overall contract for Boston teachers. The discovery school concept was the focus of an exploratory meeting in May for staff from 22 Boston schools. There was genuine interest and excitement about the concept, reports Kathy Trainor, a teacher at Boston’s Higginson Elementary School who attended the meeting.

“We’re trying to do something different with the special education population at our school right now, and the extra flexibility on things like budgeting might help us along,” she explains. “We want to integrate academics through new types of collaboration between special ed and regular ed teachers.” Trainor, who is also a BTU building representative, says the flexibility built into the discovery-school approach stops short of changing such key contractual areas as hours worked and scheduling. That sets it apart from pilot schools and might make it more appealing to many teachers in the city, particularly many experienced teachers who remember firsthand how hard it was to win many of those rights in contract fights from decades past. The discovery school might promote a healthy mix of experienced and new teachers at schools that opt in, Trainor says, and reduce the problems of turnover and burnout that often plague schools operating under other types of flexible models.

Those were some of the considerations that prompted the discovery school concept, says BTU president Richard Stutman, who presented the idea at the May exploratory meeting along with district deputy superintendent Chris Coxon and Ellen Guiney, executive director of a local education foundation called the Boston Plan for Excellence. “It’s definitely a work in progress,” Stutman says, but “it could offer exciting new options for schools.”

The BTU president emphasizes there are no plans to substitute discovery schools for pilot schools. In fact, the union president several weeks ago publicly invited many traditional charter schools operating in the district to consider adopting the pilot school model. Moving to pilot schools would preserve many features associated with charter schools, while strengthening the ties between these buildings and traditional public schools, says Stutman. The discovery school is a logical extension of the innovative efforts already under way in Boston, the AFT leader believes.

The brand-new Jackson Olin High School, built in a working class neighborhood in Birmingham, will enroll 2,000 students this school year.

During the training, Linda Stelly, associate director of the AFT’s educational issues department, facilitated goal-setting by departmental groups for the upcoming academic year. Educational issues staffer Rosalind LaRocque provided information from the AFT Educational Research and Dissemination program’s Instructional Strategies That Work course. And ER&D national trainers from Florida, Montana and Ohio were on hand to showcase the professional development program’s offerings.

The seminar also provided a vehicle for helping a nascent union in its organizing efforts. “This day helped define the Birmingham AFT as a union that serves professionals and believes in high standards and quality education for all children,” says AFT senior national representative Ed Crook, who is leading the Birmingham organizing project.

Boston Teachers Union building representative Lisa MacGeorge says the union has given her a vehicle for advocating on behalf of her colleagues and the kids she teaches.

Both Hillman and MacGeorge are featured in the AFT’s Everyday Heroes exhibit, which was unveiled during the AFT convention. The exhibit is “an attempt to show in a graphic way the contributions that our members make each and every day, and those that they have made in the past,” AFT president Edward J. McElroy says. The display includes more than 200 photographs.

Hillman, accompanied at the exhibit’s opening by two retired UFT members who also taught in Prince Edward County—Janice Goldsmith-Bastuni and Bonita Leeds—said she hopes the exhibit’s history section will show members, particularly younger, newer ones, some of what their predecessors endured.

“Members need to know that we fought and sacrificed for the contracts and benefits they have today.” In order to keep them, members today “will have to continue to fight and organize,” she said.

A fifth-grade teacher, MacGeorge says she’s proud to be one of the members featured in the exhibit. “It’s nice to have a place where you’re appreciated.”

All or part of the traveling exhibit is available to local and state federations. For information, contact Jaime Zapata at 202/662-4832 or jzapata@aft.org.