As Schools Chancellor Joel Klein struggles to implement the uniform math and reading curricula that he has chosen for New York City’s public schools, nothing is so striking as the extent to which he is tied down. The Lilliputians of the Tweed Trust have so restrained what Mr. Klein can ask of the system’s teachers that the situation borders on the Swiftian. Under the city’s contract with the United Federation of Teachers, teachers cannot be asked to come in more than one day before the beginning of the school year — even in a year when thousands of teachers need to learn entirely new methods of teaching. To get around this, the Department of Education has come up with a three-pronged approach: Stringing together three professional development days at the beginning of the school year to create a mini training seminar; cajoling teachers and paying them extra to attend a few days of training sessions during the summer, and sending home a CD-ROM to teachers with information on the new curricula. Our own Gulliver, we’re sure, cannot help but look on wistfully as our city’s charter schools run free.

While the public schools are straining against a tardy September 3 start date, at least one New York City charter school is up and running: The Bronx Charter School for the Arts at Hunts Point, launching this fall, has been training all of its teachers since July 14. The training session ends August 21, giving the teachers a breather before school starts with 160 students from kindergarten to grade 3 in early September. “We have all of our teachers here for five weeks, Monday through Thursday, 9 to 5,” the school’s executive director, Xanthe Jory, told The New York Sun yesterday. The weeks are split up into team building, curriculum work, specialized instruction, one-on-one meetings with students, and training on the technology and the nuts and bolts of the school. Ms. Jory is able to implement such a rigorous preparatory session for one reason: She is not bound by the UFT’s work rules.”It is extraordinarily helpful,” she said of the ability to bring in her teachers early. Though once the school is off the ground Ms. Jory said she expects to scale back the summer session, she still says she will bring all of the teachers in for at least two weeks before school every year. She also said she will incorporate professional development time creatively into the school year — something else Mr. Klein is unable to do. “It’s a question of flexibility,” she said.

A two-week “summer institute” is what the Community Partnership Charter School in Fort Green and Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, has settled on. The executive director of Beginning With Children (the parent institute of Community Partnership), Mimi Corcoran, told the Sun yesterday,”It’s very important to build a collegial, collaborative environment.” Most of the school’s professional development is done in-house. “When you bring people in, they don’t understand your environment and the culture you’re building,” Ms. Corcoran said. It’s a point New York’s public school teachers would take this summer as they sit through training sessions with instructors from all over the country, many of whom have never heard of the Regents. Ms. Corcoran’s teachers also don’t feel ambushed by the summer training, as do the public teachers who had the idea of summer training sprung on them on the last day of school or later.”It’s clearly understood that this is what you’re signing on to,” Ms. Corcoran said.

Ms. Corcoran’s organization also oversees a school that was converted to a charter school from a public school, the eponymous Beginning With Children Charter School in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. There, however, she is bound by the UFT contract — such schools inherit the UFT contract and remain under it unless a majority of teachers vote to liberate management.”If I wanted my entire faculty there in the summer I’d find it a challenging thing,” Ms. Corcoran said, alluding to the fact that her unionized teachers can’t be forced to come to school. “You’ve got to kind of grovel to make it happen.” Mr. Klein has grown accustomed to groveling. Negotiating the last teacher’s contract, Mayor Bloomberg traded a 16% raise to teachers for 100 extra minutes in the school week — and control of the school system. But ever since some minor layoffs were put on the table, the teachers union has been all ropes and tying. The current contract expired on May 31. It is the time for Mr. Klein to fight ferociously to undo some of the most restrictive work rules that bind his Department of Education’s efforts at reform. The best approach the chancellor could take is to wield the blade of vouchers.