Antwan Wilson

Antwan Wilson (born 1972) is an American teacher and school administrator. He was appointed the Superintendent of the Oakland Unified School District in Oakland, California, in 2014, and resigned effective February 2017. On December 20, 2016, he was confirmed as Chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools in Washington, D.C. He began his new position on February 1, 2017.

Wilson resigned as DCPS chancellor on February 20, 2018, after media reports that he had bypassed the school system's lottery process to win a place at a prestigious school for one of his children.

Early life and education Wilson was born in Wichita, Kansas, about 1972. (where he was one of only a handful of minority students in upper-level classes). Wilson entered college intending to be a pre-law major, with the goal of attending law school and becoming a civil rights attorney.

Early career

Wichita and Lincoln After graduation, Wilson resolved to teach for at least five years. He spent a year teaching in Raleigh, North Carolina, and then three years teaching at a high school in Wichita. He also coached basketball and track. In 1999, Wilson accepted a job as an assistant principal at Lincoln High School in Lincoln, Nebraska, but left after a year to take a position as assistant principal at Wichita South High School. Wilson was appointed principal at Wichita's Pleasant Valley Middle School. Wilson adopted the motto "Success for all. No excuses." during his time at Pleasant Valley, and implemented a number of programs for students, faculty, and parents to boost attendance, reduce discipline problems, and improve learning. Students at Montbello had struggled to do well, and attendance, graduation rates, and state test scores were all low. Discipline problems were rife at the school, and teacher turnover was high. State test scores improved and suspensions decreased during Wilson's tenure at Montbello. A year later, During his tenure as assistant superintendent, Wilson co-founded a program titled "Denver Summit Schools" that targeted the school district's 11 worst-performing schools. Each school received a theme (such an international studies or culinary arts), assistance with discipline and behavioral issues, and began offering Advanced Placement courses. Teachers received new instructional training and additional support. Enrollment at the schools soared, the dropout rate fell by 60 percent, and test scores rose (most significantly for racial minorities). His reputation for turning around low-performing schools in Denver attracted him to the Oakland search committee. with a start date of July 1, 2014.

Initiatives While working in Oakland, Wilson implemented several administrative changes. He established a new teacher and leader evaluation system, and improved each school's autonomy regarding staffing and the adoption of teaching innovations. Another of Wilson's emphases as superintendent was a commitment to social-emotional learning. About 25 percent of Oakland's public school students attend city charter schools, while another 25 percent attend a school outside the city. His goal was to eliminate cherry picking by charter schools, and make charter school admissions more transparent. His low-performing school reconstitution initiative proved controversial. Parents of special needs students accused Wilson of attempting to mainstream their children without providing adequate personnel or funds to mainstream teachers, thereby harming their children's health and education. Wilson defended the budget, arguing that he had balanced OUSD's budget every year in the past, and that asking for full funding of programs and making cuts later was a normal part of the budget process.

Washington, D.C. On November 21, 2016, Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser nominated Wilson to be the Chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools. Wilson announced the same day that he was resigning as superintendent of the Oakland school district, effective in February 2017. His nomination was unanimously confirmed by the council on December 20, and his first day on the job was February 1, 2017.

In November 2017, The Washington Post reported that Wilson had left the Oakland public school system in an unresolved financial crisis. Wilson, the newspaper said, had downplayed Oakland's $30 million budget deficit to D.C. officials and the public. Carmelita Reyes, principal of Oakland International High School, co-chair of Oakland's Principals Advisory Committee, and a member of the Oakland School District Budget Advisory Committee, said that shortly after Wilson announced his resignation, all school district budgets in Oakland were frozen due to the emerging financial crisis. The Post disclosed that: Wilson hired dozens of new executive staff, created new positions and departments that were not budgeted, and paid these individuals more than usual salary offered by the Oakland school district. In his last year in office in Oakland, Wilson overspent his budget for classified supervisors and administrators by $11.8 million (more than double what was budgeted), and his budget for professional and consulting services by $6.8 million (almost a third more than what was budgeted). During the two-and-a-half years Wilson was employed as Oakland superintendent, the Oakland school district chronically underspent the budget for books and classroom supplies. In the 2015–2016 school year, only $12.3 million was spent (about a third less than budgeted), and the spending dropped to just $6.8 million in the 2016–2017 school year (two-thirds less than budgeted). In a potential conflict of interest, Wilson hired the head of a consulting firm which was already doing business for the Oakland school district. This individual was paid $30,000 a month. The Wilson administration in Oakland overestimated the number of students it would enroll for the 2016–2017 school year. When the actual enrollment numbers came in low, the school district should have laid off several dozen teachers. It declined to do so, which cost the district $3.2 million. The fiscal crisis in Oakland was so severe, that on August 15, 2017, the state-run Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT, which assists the district in managing its affairs), said the Oakland public school district had "lost control of its spending, [and] allow[ed] school sites and departments to ignore and override board policies by spending beyond their budgets." FCMAT also concluded that during Wilson's tenure as superintendent, "this behavior has permeated to the site administration, causing a lack of consistency in appropriate site size, staffing, class offerings and budgets." Auditors for the state of California concluded in another report that, under Wilson, the Oakland school district had "lost control of its spending". On November 8, 2015, the Oakland Board of Education ordered $15.1 million in emergency budget cuts, even though the budget had already been significantly cut earlier in the year. In the summer of 2017, Wilson established a new policy prohibiting the DCPS chancellor from granting non-lottery admissions without following the exceptions procedures.

On February 16, 2018, Wilson admitted in an interview with WAMU, a local public radio station, that he asked then-Deputy Mayor for Education Jennifer Niles to exempt his daughter from the admissions lottery and immediately transfer her from Duke Ellington School of the Arts (where she was having personal and academic problems) to Woodrow Wilson High School. The request was granted. By Tuesday morning, February 20, seven of the 13 members of the D.C. Council had joined the call for Wilson's resignation. Mayor Muriel Bowser placed Wilson on administrative leave and asked for his resignation. Wilson resigned, effectively immediately, later that afternoon. Efn|Chiefs for Change, founded by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush,

Personal life Wilson married his wife, Tresa (also an educator), while working in Wichita from 2000 to 2003. The couple had a daughter, and twin daughters.

Wilson is known for waking every day at 3 A.M. to exercise, meditate, and prepare for the day. His role models include his mother; his mentor and former teacher, Tim Carroll; Barack and Michelle Obama; football coach Vince Lombardi; and former basketball player Magic Johnson.