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. 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 (BTU) 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. A major sticking point is whether teachers at all the city's 17 pilot schools should be paid overtime for hours they work beyond those specified in the districtwide contract. The two sides opted in 2004 to table their disagreements in the interest of signing their overdue three-year pact, which they did in the spring of 2004. Unfortunately for Gardner Elementary School, its teachers voted to "go pilot" in the fall of 2003, as the union was staging a work slowdown amid contract talks. Conversions to pilot status need approval from a district-union steering committee--either the district superintendent or the union president can veto the plans--and that committee did not meet during the contract dispute.