Mayor Adrian Fenty is looking like St. Sebastian, the Christian martyr who shows up in paintings tied to a tree and shot with arrows. Here’s a political leader who stuck his neck out and risked his political future on the quixotic goal of fixing D.C.’s historically and deeply dysfunctional school system. By many measures, it was bold, brave and worthy of sainthood, if he succeeds.

What does he get?

Barbs from critics who call him an upstart. Challenges from citizen activists claiming he’s usurping their democratic rights.

“Holds” from anonymous senators who stall our local legislation that for some ungodly and undemocratic reason must pass congressional muster before it can be enacted.

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Let’s attempt to deflect these missiles one at a time.

» Fenty’s a governmental novice who has taken on the monumental task of reforming the public education system with little experience; therefore, he should leave it to the professionals.

I can see this point. Look at any big city school system — New York, Los Angeles, Chicago — and you will enter a microcosm where urban ills are distilled into six hours of turmoil.

The schools get the kids who have not had breakfast, come from homes without books and sometimes without parents, walk to school through a gauntlet of boarded-up homes and drug dealers.

In attempting to fix the schools, Fenty is taking on not just the leaky roofs and undulating gym floors — and the downtown educational bureaucracy — he’s also endeavoring to fix the social ills that send kids to schools unwilling and unable to learn.

But as a public school parent, I ask: What’s the alternative to Fenty’s commitment to change? Do we want to be at the mercy of a school system that has failed to educate too many of our children for decades? Give me Fenty.

» Critics who claim Fenty has abused their democratic rights are being dogmatic and obstructionist. Fenty ran for mayor on a platform of school reform. An overwhelming majority voted for Fenty and his devotion to public education. First off, he introduced legislation to the City Council, which required a change in the city charter. The council held a host of public hearings. It amended and approved the legislation. Fenty signed it. Tell me how this is not democratic and by the rules. Here’s what the proposed referendum will accomplish: At a cost of $500,000, it will at minimum drain momentum from Fenty’s reform movement and at worst stall it.

» Two U.S. senators attempted to stall our duly passed and signed legislation. Our neighbor, Ben Cardin, wanted to meddle in the Oak Hill youth center matter; Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu wanted to micromanage a detail about the state education office. Both are local matters best left to us voters.

In my recollection, Fenty is the only mayor who has had the moxie and drive to take on our city’s biggest problem.

The martyrs here are 50,000 school children; they— and Fenty — are the ones bleeding from the arrows.

Harry Jaffe has been covering the Washington area since 1985. E-mail him at hjaffe@washingtonian.com.