About two dozen teachers at a KIPP charter school are organizing to become members of the New York City teachers' union, the UFT.

Will their move cause other charters to go union? Probably not. Most charters remain outside the orbit of the unions because organizing them is an expensive proposition, since they have to be courted individually. Also, union membership holds less appeal to the generally younger teachers employed by charter schools.

But the teachers' decision does bring new urgency to KIPP's conundrum: how to give students with serious educational deficits the attention they need to excel while protecting teachers from burnout. Teachers at the school to be unionized say they are groaning under their heavy workload, the long days and the need to be on call. On top of that, in recent months two of their number apparently got fired.

Said Luisa Bonifacio, a 6th grade teacher at the AMP Academy, the KIPP schools in question: "We want a fair disciplinary process so teachers cannot be fired at will and so students have a consistent learning environment." Translation: we want some security that doesn't come at the expense of our personal lives.