Bloomberg visits Fenty, tours City Hall

After all, District Mayor Adrian Fenty patterned his education reform proposal on the New York City school system, over which Bloomberg has full control. And Fenty borrowed the idea for his “bullpen” headquarters from Bloomberg’s wide-open operational hub.

“I predict great things,” Bloomberg said of Fenty Tuesday during a rare visit to the John A. Wilson Building. “I think this mayor is a breath of fresh air for Washington.”

Bloomberg praised the District’s 36-year-old mayor as aggressive, innovative and willing to run risks and take responsibility for failure. He praised Fenty’s plan to assume control of the city schools, just as Bloomberg did in 2002.

“Everybody says ‘I want change but not that change,’ ” Bloomberg said. “And every single year we turn out another generation of our kids who will not have the skills to compete, will not have the abilities to share in the great American dream. We just don’t have time to sit around and debate these issues.”

To which Fenty said, “I think the mayor is right. This campaign was a mandate to fix our schools, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

Fenty visited New York multiple times after his landslide primary election victory.

From those meetings stemmed his education plan and the idea for a bullpen, a large open room where he can sit among his top deputies in cubicles, rather than behind closed doors.

Fenty called Bloomberg the “standard-bearer” and said “we’ve learned a lot from him.”

Bloomberg, who made a brief appearance in the D.C. Council chambers, presented Fenty with four wall clocks and four name plates — printed Northwest, Northeast, Southwest and Southeast. The Big Apple mayor has five clocks in his bullpen, one for each of New York’s boroughs.

Fenty gave Bloomberg an official District pen set and a proclamation declaring the billionaire an honorary D.C. citizen.

“Mr. Mayor,” Fenty said, “we’re very interested in having you as a taxpayer.”

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