The war between the charter school movement and D.C. public schools is over. Charters have won, if victory means that charter schools are thriving and here to stay. Fact is the nation’s capital has been a lab for charter schools, and the experiment is a success.

If there was any doubt, take a look at D.C. schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s exchange with at-large member David Catania during a recent hearing.

Catania, one of Rhee’s best buddies on the legislature, suggested the Council put a cap on charter schools, the better to stem the tide of these fast-multiplying schools that are independent of the school bureaucracy yet rely on public funds.

Catania was expecting Rhee to take the path of least resistance and thank him for saving her public schools from competition. But Rhee doesn’t walk in the same worn-out shoes of her predecessors.

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No thanks, Rhee responded. This is about educating children rather than dividing up turf.

“The problem is not capping charter schools,” she told me, “it’s about asking how do we make sure we get as many kids into great charter schools as possible.

“I would fight to the death for a real good charter school,” she says.

Which proves that Rhee actually cares that kids are educated well with public dollars, not about what form that education takes.

Perhaps it’s best to see this in less bellicose terms, though many public school advocates have seen charter schools as an all-out assault on public education, as soon as Congress passed the law allowing charter schools in 1997.

How about if we view the public and charter schools as two equal parts of the public school system? Our tax dollars finance both public and charter schools, after all. Let’s do the math:

D.C. public school students = 49,422.

D.C. charter school students = 21,947.

For a grand total of 81,396 students in the system. That’s a healthy number, especially for those who like to say our public school students have dropped below 50,000.

At the moment there are 55 charter schools; some terrific (Washington Math, Science and Technology, for instance), some are mediocre, some are lousy and likely to be closed. Five more are opening this fall. Seven Catholic schools might open as charters this year, too. By 2009, D.C. could have 77 charters – far more than any city in the nation.

Rhee gets it. She’s asked charter schools to compete to run some of the poor-performing high schools. The blending of the two systems might be beginning before our eyes.

If that is indeed what’s taking place, then the city and Congress need to take a look at the composition of the public charter school board. It has a phenomenal leader in Tom Nida, a D.C. native who’s run a tight, inexpensive, efficient bureaucracy. But as charters become more of a choice for students, the city – through the mayor and council – should have more of a choice in board members who oversee the schools.

Now the mayor chooses from a list provided by the feds. That has to change.