Robert Bobb isn’t a name you hear around the District much anymore, even though the man affectionately known as “Bob-squared” served as City Administrator during Mayor Anthony Williams’ second term and was elected to serve as president of the D.C. School Board in 2006. After having pretty much all of his authority pulled out from under him when Mayor Adrian Fenty gained control of the city’s schools, Bobb pretty much disappeared from everyone’s radar screen.

But he’s now re-appeared, and he’s trying to do in Detroit what Michelle Rhee — the woman who took almost all of his powers — is doing here. The New York Times reports today that Bobb, who was appointed as “emergency financial manager” of Detroit’s public school system by Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm in January, is looking to close a $303 million deficit in the school system’s budget. And how, exactly? By shuttering 23 schools this summer, plus another 30 to 40 next year, and by laying off as many as 600 teachers.

Holy. God. Bobb is making Rhee’s closing 23 schools and her attempt to institute performance pay for teachers look like municipal child’s play. Detroit’s public schools may well be in a worse state than our own — the system loses 10,000 kids a year — and Bobb is starting to get get Rhee-like levels of attention. A recent editorial in the Detroit Free-Press was threateningly titled, “Help Bobb fix Detroit schools, or get out of his way.”

It’s an interesting position for Bobb to be in. When he was elected president of the D.C. School Board, he proposed an alternative to Fenty’s takeover plans. Now he finds himself in much the same position as Rhee — a high-level appointee given broad powers to enact change while facing down a sluggish bureaucracy and reticent school board.

Maybe he picked up a little something from the folks who gave him the boot, or maybe it’s just Bobb being Bobb. He has always been more the man behind the scenes than the elected servant, seemingly preferring to do the heavy lifting while having political cover from his bosses. Now it looks like Detroit has again given him that shot, and he’s really running with it.