While the United Federation of Teachers sets out to prove through its two charter schools that it is possible to run a high-performing school in NYC with the existing labor contracts in place, former Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz is already claiming she couldn't run the kind of school her students deserve under the existing framework.

Moskowitz and the union, as you'll recall, butted heads in 2003 when the councilwoman held unprecedented public hearings on the impact of the city's custodian, principal, and teacher contracts on the daily operations of schools. Today, she's serving as the executive director of Harlem Success Academy Charter School, which will open this summer. She writes about her experience in taking what she learned as chair of the council's education committee and applying it to her new school in the new Education Next. (Lots of stuff in there about bargaining and schools, by the way, if you're into that whole thing.) This is the kicker on Moskowitz' piece:

While employment contracts make it almost impossible to redesign a traditional school around the needs of students, we can do that redesign at our charter school. Harlem Success kids will have a school day of 8 hours and 40 minutes, compared with 6 hours and 40 minutes in the traditional public schools, because we determined that that was the amount of time the kids needed. In an effort to determine our core competencies, we are asking whether it makes sense to have extracurricular activities, such as supplemental sports and art classes, taught by the school’s teachers or contracted out to nonprofit groups who may offer these services at reduced prices and provide higher-quality services. Even seemingly small decisions such as the number of minutes for science instruction cannot be made in traditional public schools because they are fixed by the contract. At Harlem Success, we determined that our kids need 60 minutes for science labs, rather than the 50-minute periods prescribed by the union contract, and so they got them.

As we have been thinking through all the education questions, I am struck by the fact that we couldn'’t even be posing these questions if we were constrained by the labor contracts governing the regular public schools. Our hands would be tied by the contracts and by the powerful precedents that enshrine them in stone even in the face of so-called negotiations. There is no doubt in my mind that we will be able to do a far better job educating our students because we are free from these constraints. That is important to me, not least of all so that I can keep my job. My one-page contract, which I negotiated and drafted myself, states: "I will serve at the pleasure of the Board as an at-will employee."