Yesterday afternoon the Senate unanimously approved Mayor Adrian Fenty’s school takeover legislation. The vote finally came after three separate holds were placed, and then quickly lifted, by Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), and at the very final hour, Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) placed the third Senate hold on the bill. Levin removed the hold after speaking with Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton. Now the bill only awaits approval from President Bush, who is expected to sign it by the end of this week. When he does, Fenty will have the authority to begin immediately implementing his takeover plan, with the hopes that many of the changes he intends to put in place will already be in motion by the time school starts in the fall. So case closed, right?

Well, maybe not. As the WaPo reports, yesterday the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics ruled in favor of D.C. resident Mary Spencer, who is seeking to force a referendum on the legislation. Spencer filed a petition with the board in late April to put Fenty’s school takeover plan on a special election ballot, which would allow D.C. residents to vote on the issue directly.

“[Fenty’s] platform when he was running for mayor did not say that he wanted to take over the school system, he said he wanted to change it. Him changing the school system is totally different to me than what he has done,” Spencer told DCist. “He’s an elected official, he’s not a dictator. This is a democratic society. It’s not all about Mayor Fenty. It’s about the people of the District of Columbia.”

Fenty said in a statement that he intends to challenge the elections board’s ruling in court. Should the ruling stand, beginning June 4 Spencer and the groups working with her — including one that is against Fenty’s plan and put up the Web site SaveOurSchoolsDC.org — will have just about a week to gather 20,000 signatures to put the issue on the ballot. Spencer said she and the others she’s working with are currently devising a strategy to collect those signatures, should they be allowed to do so.

Photo by grundlepuck

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