D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on Tuesday nominated Antwan Wilson, the superintendent of the Oakland Unified School District in California, to become the next chancellor of D.C. Public Schools.
Mr. Wilson will be charged with overseeing about 45,000 students and closing considerable gaps in racial and economic achievement. He will need to be confirmed by the D.C. Council before becoming schools chancellor.
“As superintendent [in Oakland], he has focused on managing and improving a complex organization, championing important messages to improve teaching and learning, increasing high school graduation rates, and improving social and emotional learning in special education processes,” Ms. Bowser said at a press conference at Eastern Senior High School in Northeast.
Mr. Wilson, 44, will replace former Chancellor Kaya Henderson, who resigned in September, and Interim Chancellor John Davis, who was passed over for permanent chancellor.
“The District is well-positioned to continue moving forward on behalf of young people,” Mr. Wilson said Tuesday. “It’s extremely important to make sure that schools are places that educate young people and prepare them for success, not just academic success, but success as people.”
He comes to the District from Oakland, California, where he has led that city’s schools since 2014. Before that, he served as an assistant superintendent in Denve Public Schools. Mr. Wilson also has served as a high school principal in a “high poverty neighborhood” and a middle school principal in Denver and in Wichita, Kansas.
His predecessor, Ms. Henderson, had spent seven years as a D.C. schools official, first under former Chancellor Michelle Rhee.
Ms. Henderson recently was censured by the District’s ethics board. The board said she was wrong to solicit $100,000 for a gala honoring teachers from former food services contractor Chartwells just weeks after the company was accused of cheating the school system out of $19 million. Ms. Henderson agreed to the censure, saying she didn’t realize her actions were prohibited under city ethics rules.
As chancellor, Mr. Wilson will earn an annual base salary of $280,000 under a two-year contract. He also will receive a 5 percent signing bonus and up to 10 percent in performance based bonuses. Both Ms. Henderson and Ms. Rhee operated under the same incentives package, but each received a base salary of $275,000. Ms. Bowser did not say how much Mr. Wilson had made in Oakland, but indicated that he is taking a pay cut to come to the District.
He will begin Feb. 1, if confirmed by the council. Mr. Wilson, who is married and has three children, said he would send his kids to D.C. public schools but added that he has not yet chosen a neighborhood.
Washington Teachers Union President Elizabeth Davis said her group would support anyone approved by the council, but expressed displeasure with the process in selecting Mr. Wilson.
“Going forward WTU and its members will work together in the spirit of collaboration no matter who is named,” she said Tuesday in an interview.
Ms. Davis, who was part of an advisory panel that was to make recommendations to Ms. Bowser in the chancellor search, said she was caught off-guard Monday night when news of the Wilson nomination broke.
“I was absolutely floored,” she said.
According to Ms. Davis, the 17-member committee never saw a short list of candidates or their resumes. Earlier this week, she was called to convene an emergency meeting at 9 a.m. Tuesday, just 90 minutes before the Wilson announcement. Ms. Davis said committee members were given Mr. Wilson’s resume, and spoke to him and the mayor before the announcement.
“This was an opportunity for the mayor and others to show parents that we’re going to do business in a different way,” Ms. Davis said. “Here we are, a panel of 17 people with about an hour before we meet the candidate that we knew nothing about.”
Ms. Davis said moving forward that the D.C. Council should scrutinize the process taken by Ms. Bowser to make sure the law was followed and point out any missteps that may have been taken.
“That’s an internal lesson for students,” she said. “They’re watching how we do business too. We cannot ignore that. When we talk about following the rules it means for everybody.”
Bowser administration spokesman Kevin Harris said the mayor actually conducted “the most inclusive Chancellor search under mayoral control and possibly beyond.”
“We received and solicited the committee’s full input in compliance with the law and used it to inform this critical selection for our children’s future,” Mr. Harris told The Washington Times Tuesday night. “We successfully oversaw a process that yielded an exceptional leader for our students, with significant input from community leaders and parents.”
At Tuesday’s press conference, Ms. Bowser said she followed not only the spirit but also the letter of the law in constituting an advisory panel and soliciting recommendations, but the decision ultimately was hers to make.
Mr. Wilson said his move from Oakland has come because of the opportunity DCPS presents. In a letter to colleagues and employees in Oakland, he said taking the position in the District means he can effect change in a place at the center of the national debate.
“Leading an equity agenda aimed at increasing student achievement and elevating academic social emotional learning in our nation’s capital is more important now than ever because of the challenges our nation is facing,” Mr. Wilson said in the letter.
He praised Ms. Henderson and Ms. Rhee, and said he’d modeled policies in Oakland after some here in the District, signaling that the ideological divide between himself and the two previous chancellors will be narrow.
Mr. Wilson will come to DCPS as the system is making gains but also has a long way to go in making sure poor and minority students are ready for life after high school.
Across the city this year, schools saw a 2-percent gain in English and a 3-percent gain in the math portions of the District’s Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) test. At the same time, the achievement gap between poor minority students and wealthier white students continues to widen.
On the English portion, 82 percent of white students scored as college- and career-ready. That’s compared to 20 percent of black and 25 percent of Hispanic students. Economically disadvantaged students of all races scored worst, with only 17 percent ready for college or a career after high school.
Before Mr. Wilson can take on any of those daunting tasks, he first must face the D.C. Council.
Council member David Grosso, who heads the Education Committee, promised to hold public hearing on his nomination and said he looks “forward to thoroughly examining Mr. Wilson’s record over the next few weeks.”
Mr. Grosso would not signal whether he supports the nomination, but said he’d relayed to the mayor the characteristics he thinks the new chancellor needs.
In an August letter to Ms. Bowser, Mr. Grosso said closing the achievement gap is the biggest priority and students should be challenged at all schools.
“Over the past couple years the committee has heard concerns from students in a number of settings about the lack of educational equity when it comes to academic rigor across DCPS’ comprehensive high schools,” Mr. Grosso wrote. “According to our students, the quality and availability of instructional and extracurricular opportunities vary greatly depending on where their school is located.”
The Education Committee will hold public roundtables on Nov. 30, Dec. 5 and Dec. 8. The first two will be held in the community and the final one at the John A. Wilson Building.
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