Starting tomorrow, the chairwoman of the City Council’s education committee, Eva Moskowitz, will convene a series of hearings on the contracts that govern New York City’s school system. The most important of these, the teachers contract, will be taken up on Thursday. To the best of our knowledge, and the councilwoman’s, this is the first undertaking of its kind in Gotham: exposing to the light of day in a deliberate manner the details of the 316-page document that binds the hands of the Department of Education and virtually every public school principal in the five boroughs. The spectacle will be of interest to every parent with a child whose education is ruled by this ream of paper.

It has been no mean task to convene these hearings. Potential witnesses, including teachers, principals, and retired principals, have been extraordinarily skittish about testifying, according to Ms. Moskowitz. They are so skittish that Ms. Moskowitz is not releasing a witness list ahead of the hearings. Some of those testifying — at least three people, according to Ms. Moskowitz, including current and retired principals — will appear via audio recording, with their voices distorted. It’s enough to think that comparisons of New York’s education establishment to a monopoly is too mild a metaphor.

Aside from educators testifying in a manner normally reserved for informants on the Mafia, there will also be on view the pettiness of the teachers contract. The basics, such as salaries, pensions, and health care, will be aired, as well as what the contract dictates schools can and can’t ask teachers to do. Sol Stern, author of “Breaking Free: Public School Lessons and the Imperative of School Choice,” has dubbed the UFT agreement the “we-don’t-do-windows” contract. Among the things teachers can’t be asked to do under the contract: walk children to a school bus, patrol the lunchrooms or the hallways or the yards, cover extra classes in an emergency, come in more than one day before classes begin at the start of the year, attend more than one staff meeting a month, and attend a staff meeting during lunch.

Ms. Moskowitz pointed to some other problems with the contract in a conversation with The New York Sun yesterday. “One of the problems that jumps out at me is there’s a one-size-fits-all model,” she said, especially as regards hiring and firing processes. “With compensation, if you have conformity, you’re going to have a hard time getting science teachers.… There’s a market out there,” she said. Similarly, there’s the problem of principal discretion. “Fifty percent of openings are subject to the UFT [seniority] transfer program,” she said. “I can’t imagine having an employee I haven’t even had a chance to interview.” Furthermore, when a failing school shuts down and a new one is opened in its place, 50% of the teaching positions at the new school must be filled by the most senior teachers from the school that was shut down — hardly a recipe for a turnaround.

All of this hardly scratches the surface of the problems in the teachers contract. Ms. Moskowitz knows she can only expose a condensed version on Thursday. To that end, she has published “Council Notes,” fashioned after Cliffs Notes, of the teacher’s contract in an 18-page booklet. Other topics covered include the inability of principals to discipline and fire incompetent teachers, restrictions on principals assigning teachers where they are needed, and the disincentives to principals honestly evaluating teachers. The chancellor, Joel Klein, is scheduled to come before Ms. Moskowitz’s committee on Monday. The president of the United Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, has been invited but may not attend. As a defender of the status quo, she’s unlikely to shed any additional light on the flaws of the contract, but she could be held to account for wrapping our schools in chains.