Maybe the biggest news about D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty’s formal announcement of a planned school takeover is that it might not be news at all. Flanked by nine members of the D.C. Council — a considerable number given that there are currently only 11 seated — Fenty yesterday detailed his plans to hand most budgetary and management authority to a chancellor appointed by him, leaving the elected School Board to handle education policy matters. While a majority of the council and the Post lauded Fenty’s initiative, the only real opposition seems to be coming from School Board president and former city administrator Robert Bobb — indicating that Fenty’s plan may prove to be less of a battle than originally expected.

How come?

Well, the city’s public schools have gotten so abysmally bad that anything approaching radical reform is likely to be endorsed, and warmly so. Fenty also played his cards just right by announcing his plans early on, traveling to a number of cities to see how their school takeover plans were devised and implemented, and taking into consideration the opinions of a number of council-members. More importantly, though, Fenty has made himself the sole stakeholder of any potential failures of his plan — should the schools not improve, everyone will know who to point to, and will likely do so with gusto. Fenty has built a foundation solid enough that Bobb’s objections seem more like petty turf battles than principled opposition.

But what do the teachers think? They are, after all, the front-line fighters in what has until now been a losing battle. A number of teachers we spoke to expressed their support for the plan, noting that the status quo just couldn’t hold any longer. One teacher who came to the District after a stint in New York told us:

Having taught in New York where the school system was taken over by the mayor and it changed things for the better, I have a pretty positive view of Fenty’s proposal. I think centralizing the system means there will be fewer cracks for money and resources to slip through, a chronic problem in DCPS. If we can make clear what the expectations are for schools across the city, accountability for teachers, administrators, and parents becomes a real possibilty.