Fitchburg takes a lesson from Hub pilot schools

The Fitchburg school system will open a middle school in September with a focus on the arts that offers teachers more control over how the school is run in exchange for some of their union rights.

In an announcement to be made at tonight's School Committee meeting, Fitchburg will become the first of at least three school systems nationwide to replicate Boston's decade-long pilot schools movement, now a network of 19 autonomous public schools.

Boston created pilot schools in 1995 in response to competition from charter schools, which are independently run public schools that draw students and money away from the school system. Pilot schools, which are part of the school system, were also meant to function as laboratories to test teaching methods so that successful practices could be passed onto other district schools.

In Fitchburg, teachers will work an extra hour each day without overtime pay so the school's 200 students can have a longer academic day, said Superintendent Andre Ravenelle. They will decide what and how they will teach, using resources from the Fitchburg Art Museum and New York City's Lincoln Center.

''Every urban public school across America is still struggling with overall low student achievement, high dropout rate, as well as the achievement gap," said Dan French, executive director of the Center for Collaborative Education, a Roxbury-based nonprofit that supports education reform initiatives including pilot schools. ''Granting schools maximum control over their resources in exchange for increased school-level accountability is a powerful formula for improved student engagement and achievement."

Boston and Fitchburg school systems negotiated with their teachers' unions to give the experimental schools more control over budget, schedule, staffing, and curriculum than other district schools. While pilot school expansion has come to a standstill in Boston because of union negotiations, the innovative schools are growing elsewhere in the Bay State as well as throughout the country, French said.

The nonprofit agency is working with a school system in California and another in Indiana to open pilot schools in September 2007, French said. A Connecticut district approached the center a month ago to explore the possibility of creating a pilot school, and last week another Massachusetts school system said it was interested. French declined to identify the school systems involved until after they have negotiated with their teachers' unions.

French said he expects to see more urban districts turn to pilot schools as a way to boost student performance. Pilot school students, on average, do better academically than students in regular Boston public schools and are more likely to attend college, according to a study released by the center last week.

''Pilot schools are one of the most promising examples in America for change strategies for school system and labor management relations," said Adam Urbanski, president of the Rochester Teachers Association in New York and director of the Teacher Union Reform Network, at a pilot school forum hosted by The Boston Foundation last week.

Expansion of the Boston program stalled in 2003 when teachers' union president Richard Stutman vetoed a pilot school proposal because he felt the system should do a better job of replicating pilot school successes and pay teachers more for working longer days, among other governance issues.

''We wish everyone good luck," he said about other districts replicating Boston's model. ''I would suggest that they pay attention to some of the issues that have surfaced here over the last decade."

The Boston Teachers Union and the School Department have been negotiating pilot schools since June 2004, stepping up the pace in recent months, Stutman said. Both sides have said they want to end the standoff before the arrival of a new superintendent in July.

Mayor Thomas M. Menino vowed during his reelection campaign that he would push for more charter schools if an agreement on pilot school expansion was not reached by the end of 2005. Seth Gitell, a spokesman for Menino, said the mayor supports pilot schools as an innovative alternative to educating Boston's children but would not elaborate on the current negotiations.

''The mayor is doing all he can to get more pilot schools in our city," Gitell said. ''He is encouraged that other cities are taking Boston's lead in trying to emulate what we're doing."

Meanwhile, Fitchburg, with a $600,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is forging ahead with its plans. In addition to the pilot middle school for grades 5 through 8 opening in September, the district will open an arts-themed pilot high school in the fall of 2007 that will eventually serve 400 students. The schools would evaluate students on a portfolio of work, not just their test grades, Ravenelle said. Students would also judge their peers' work, a practice that could spread to the district's regular schools.

''Teachers today really need that kind of flexibility," Ravenelle said. ''So many restrictions have been put on them in terms of expectations, testing, and accountability that it's taken much of that freedom from their lives. The more ownership you have, the more success you're going to have."

Tracy Jan can be reached at tjan@globe.com.