Recently, I've written a number of columns on the Chelsea, Mass., school system. Chelsea is in the news because its school board has voted, in principle, for a 10-year agreement with Boston University (BU) to turn over the board's powers to run the system to BU, a private institution. 

Such a move would be unprecedented in American history, but many welcome it as a bold new experiment that, if successful, could spread to other districts. There is universal agreement that Chelsea is a poor district with huge problems and that it needs help. In previous columns, I have applauded the idea of Chelsea's getting special help. But I also have questioned many specifics of the BU proposal. 

In the Boston Herald article (Jan. 18, 1989) below, Nicholas Paleologos, Chairman of the Massachusetts House of Representative's Committee on Education, raises an important point that I did not make in my previous columns: How is BU or any outside agency going to turn the Chelsea schools around without winning the support of those who will have to make the experiment work - the teachers and their union? 

His analysis should move both sides together to try to make it work. Even with close cooperation, there are no guarantees to success. But without the firm support of the faculty and its union, no plan will work. 

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 "Sometimes Boston University President John Silber just doesn't know when to put a sock in it. 

"His proposal to have BU manage the Chelsea public schools has the potential to be the most interesting and innovative educational initiative in America. He has weighed in with a bold and intriguing plan and practically everybody wants to help make it happen. He doesn't need to stomp all over the teachers or their representatives. For some reason, though, he just can't help himself. 

"The American Federation of Teachers, which represents Chelsea educators, in no way conforms to Silber' s preconceived stereotype of a selfish, bullheaded, narrow-minded union. If anything, Albert Shanker, its president, is the Mikhail Gorbachev of American labor leaders. His new thinking about old issues has inspired a proverbial perestroika of public education policy in cities like Pittsburgh, Dade County, Rochester and East Harlem. 

"But in a recent mini-debate on national TV, Shanker found himself on the receiving end of one of Silber' s favorite rejoinders. 'Al,' said Silber, barely able to conceal his disdain, 'you just don't know what you're talking about.' 

"Indeed, the recent spectacle to Ted Koppel refereeing this primetime bout between two education heavyweights begged the obvious question. Instead of hammering each other on Nightline, why can't they hammer out a bottom line based on a commitment to the kids in Chelsea? " 

'What you suggest,' chided and obviously irritated John Silber, 'is if a surgeon is asked to come in and perform an appendectomy, he's supposed to let the patient tell him how to do the operation.' 

"Wrong, John. Boston University will be running the hospital, not performing the surgery. The doctors are already there. They're working under conditions so awful they make M.A.S.H. look like M.G.H. 

"Those teachers are the lowest paid professionals dealing with the highest incidence of what you have correctly called 'institutionalized child neglect' in the entire state. After weeding out the few incompetents who don't belong in any classroom, you're still left with a battle-weary battalion which desperately needs support and reinforcements. Even General Patton came to understand that effective leadership doesn't have to mean slapping your own soldiers around. 

"Like it or not, the most important people in the lives of those children, after their parents, will not be found in either the board rooms at BU or the hearing rooms at the State House. They are in the classrooms at the schoolhouse. At the very least, these teachers deserve a seat at the planning table. A strategy designed to steamroller them into submissions is wholly unnecessary and will produce, at best, pyrrhic victory. 

"The hopes of Chelsea's parents and teachers for the future of their kids have been raised considerably by John Silber' s adventurous plan. His words and deeds in the upcoming weeks will ultimately determine whether he is embraced as a modern-day Horace Mann or rejected as just another corporate raider."