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TOWN TOPICS
NEWS
BY PEGGY S A NDS AN D R O B E RT D E VA N E Y
Deputy Mayor for Education Resigns, Chancellor Follows Deputy Mayor for Education Jennifer Niles resigned Feb. 16. Four days later, at close of business on Tuesday, Feb. 20, Mayor Muriel Bowser announced the resignation of Public Schools Chancellor Antwan Wilson. Wilson went on administrative leave effective immediately pending agreement on the terms of his departure. Wilson, who replaced Kaya Henderson, had served a total of one year and three weeks. After the inspector general’s office reportedly alerted Mayor Muriel Bowser that Niles had helped Wilson’s daughter make a midterm transfer to the popular Wilson High School without participating in the My School DC Lottery, the writing, it seems, was on the wall. The transfer broke a strict policy banning preferential treatment for the children of government officials that the chancellor himself wrote just months earlier. It was instituted to ensure that “No past or current public officials will receive such a placement, to limit any possibility of favoritism or improper use of public office.” Three months later, Wilson violated that
Jennifer Niles, former deputy mayor for education, was criticized in Georgetown for her handling of the Hyde-Addison School project. Courtesy E.L. Haynes Public Charter School.
School Chancellor Antwan Wilson at the Duke Ellington School rededication in August. Photo by Ari Golub.
very policy. Calls for his removal began soon after Niles’s departure, though the mayor ordered Wilson to write a public apology to parents, taking full responsibility for his wrong decision and asking for forgiveness. The first Council member to suggest that Wilson resign was Robert White on Feb. 17; others came on board over the next few days.
Wilson’s family moved from California to D.C. last summer. Two of his children gained entrance into J. O. Wilson Elementary School through the lottery. His oldest child enrolled in the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, but, according to the Washington Post, it wasn’t a good match. Wilson had his wife arrange through Deputy Mayor Niles to transfer his
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daughter to Wilson High, despite its wait list and the new policy. Bowser said she had instituted “corrective actions,” including the removal of the chancellor’s child from Wilson High. The city’s Board of Ethics and Government Accountability and the inspector general were enlisted to examine if the chancellor had violated the city’s code of conduct. The mayor might have decided that quick action was particularly urgent because of recent reports by the inspector general that former Chancellor Kaya Henderson had allowed wellconnected parents and government officials — including two senior aides to Bowser — to bypass the school lottery last year. In addition, DC Public Schools is currently embroiled in a crisis of trust after reports showed that some high schools had allowed large numbers of students to graduate though they did not meet attendance requirements, among others. Niles’s chief of staff, Ahnna Smith, was named interim deputy mayor. Chief of the Office of Elementary Schools Amanda Alexander is now interim chancellor.
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