WORCESTER— Giving schools more autonomy in decisions about staff, budget, curriculum and length of day helps students, but applying more autonomy to entire school systems isn’t so easy, said four leaders of small schools at a forum at Becker College yesterday.

The speakers represented a private school in Worcester, a charter school in Boston, a pilot school that is part of the Boston public schools, and two innovative small schools in the Worcester public school system.

Worcester is considering the pilot school model to help turn around schools that are falling behind by state and federal standards.  

“We’re interested in providing more flexibility — the pilot model is one way to do that — and we’re exploring it with a very keen eye on the economics of the whole thing,” said Superintendent James A. Caradonio. He would not speculate on how quickly a potential pilot school could materialize in Worcester, or where it might appear.

Pilot schools are granted considerable authority in setting their budgets and staffing levels, with the schools receiving a lump-sum budget based on per-pupil spending and the number of students who attend. The schools are run as a partnership between the district and its teachers union.

The city’s principals already control their own budgets, although those budgets aren’t big enough, and some of the other autonomies could be tricky, Mr. Caradonio said.

At Tech Boston Academy, a pilot school in Boston, the unionized staff has agreed to work 150 extra hours a year and be paid for only 50 of those, said Principal Mary Skipper. She said she has more control over hiring and firing than a typical public school principal, and teachers can elect not to return at the end of every school year.

She and other panelists also touted the freedom to extend the school day or year as important, but money is critical for that, Mr. Caradonio said.

Three of the city’s schools — Jacob Hiatt Magnet School, City View School and Chandler Elementary Community School — have state grants for extended school days, but doing the same thing throughout the entire district would cost about $30 million, Mr. Caradonio said.

Transforming an existing school will be more difficult than starting one from scratch, he said, echoing the remarks of June E. Eressy, principal of the University Park Campus School and Claremont Academy in Worcester.

The school district and Clark University created the University Park Campus School in 1997 from the ground up and with a carefully chosen staff. Ms. Eressy said her efforts to bring that culture to Claremont Academy, formerly the secondary grades of the Accelerated Learning Laboratory, has been trickier.

It’s “difficult and unwieldy” to remove a teacher, she said, so she has struggled to get the right team together.

“Most teachers deserve to be supported, but all teachers don’t,” she said.

In addition to Ms. Skipper and Ms. Eressy, the forum included David Roach, principal of the Nativity School of Worcester, a Jesuit middle school for inner-city boys; and Alan Safran, executive director of MATCH Academy in Boston, a charter high school.

S. Paul Reville of Worcester, chairman of the state Board of Education and president of the Cambridge-based Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy, moderated the event. The Rennie Center, the Worcester-based Research Bureau, Coghlin Electrical Contractors and Coghlin Network Services sponsored the event.

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