Photo by dracisk.

Plenty of people will watch the long-awaited “Waiting for ‘Superman'” this weekend (read our review), and my guess is that plenty will walk out with a hefty respect for Michelle Rhee. She is, after all, something of a Superwoman in the film. D.C. audiences will also probably walk out fretting what a VInce Gray mayoralty may bring — especially if it’s without Rhee at the helm of the city’s public schools. Fear not, though: as far-fetched as it may seem, Gray is a Superman too.

In the documentary, Davis Guggenheim levels his camera at the sad state of America’s public schools and the few brave reformers willing to change them. But the documentary isn’t just about how bad public education is. It is also about an alternative that may well serve to save those children — charter schools.

Throughout the film, Guggenheim intersperses his criticisms of public education with the stories of five children whose parents are desperate to get them into a charter school. Their stories crescendo in the film’s closing scenes, where each of the children is subjected to a lottery in which hundreds of families hope to land one of a limited number of slots to prized charter schools like the District’s SEED School and New York’s Harlem Success Academy.

Ironically, in Guggenheim’s not-so-subtle advocacy for charter schools, he may have found himself another Superman — and it’s Gray.