Fenty's Foe On Schools Takeover: No Mere Granny

It's an irresistible story line: Grandma takes on City Hall.

That's the way the fight against Mayor Adrian M. Fenty's school takeover legislation has been cast, featuring Mary Spencer as the underdog against big government.

Last week, Spencer emerged victorious in the first step of her push to put Fenty's takeover bill to a referendum: The D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics dismissed the government's high-powered lawyers and ruled that Spencer will be allowed the chance to collect the roughly 20,000 signatures necessary to force a ballot initiative.

Fenty (D) has elected to appeal the ruling in Superior Court, but for now Spencer is enjoying her win and is stepping up her fight. She and her allies say they are laying the groundwork to gather the signatures, which will be due around mid-June.

The diminutive Spencer, 62, makes a good poster girl. A longtime D.C. resident, she graduated from Eastern High in 1962. Her four children attended public schools in the city, as do her two grandchildren.

Spencer said she is upset that Fenty is trying to reduce the authority of the school board and take direct control of the 55,000-student school system without holding a referendum. Fenty's effort requires a change to the city's Home Rule Charter, but he has sought the approval of Congress and President Bush instead of the voters. (Fenty has said the D.C. Council's approval of his legislation amounted to public approval.)

Spencer said her grandchildren, who attend Watkins Elementary School and Stuart-Hobson Middle School, receive an "adequate" education, but she is disturbed by the dilapidated buildings.

That said, she wants city leaders to "tweak the system," not create a new governance structure.

"I feel put upon that he would not let me vote about what happens to the schoolchildren of the District of Columbia," Spencer said.

But make no mistake: Spencer is no political neophyte pushed into action by a tyrannical mayor's office. Spencer is vice president of D.C. Acorn, a social activist group, of which she has been a member for more than a decade. Acorn has been active in fighting against predatory lending and for the preservation of homeless shelters.

And she is not undertaking her fight alone. She has the backing of a loose coalition of school and political activist groups and got legal assistance from Matthew Watson, a lawyer who once worked for the city's elections board.

Still, in the news releases that are sent out about the referendum drive, the word "grandmother" is almost always attached to Spencer's name -- the better to play up the image of an unfair fight.