After a 10-Year Run, Boston ‘Pilot’ Schools Sore Point for Union

When teachers at Thomas Gardner Elementary School voted in fall 2003 to join Boston’s network of “pilot” schools, they had no inkling of the political firestorm that lay ahead.

But a few months after they moved to become part of the city’s nationally watched experiment with small, autonomous public schools, the president of the Boston Teachers Union put the kibosh on the plan. Now, whether the 300-student school will ever make the switch hangs on the outcome of an increasingly bitter standoff between the Boston school district and the 7,000-member BTU.

“This is far more than the teachers bargained for,” said David F. Simon, a local philanthropist who has strongly backed the school’s push for pilot status. “They never imagined in their wildest dreams that they would get caught in...