WMAL Interview - CHUCK THIES - 03.06.18

INTERVIEW - CHUCK THIES - - political strategist and former Mayor Vincent Gray campaign manager and close friend/adviser to Gray – discussed the revelation that ousted DCPS Chancellor Antwon Wilson says Mayor Bowser knew about the this daughter’s school transfer, despite denials.

•    D.C. mayor called her ousted school chancellor’s action ‘indefensible.’ He says she knew about it for months. (Washington Post) -- Former D.C. Public Schools chancellor Antwan Wilson said he told Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) that he had transferred his daughter to one of the city’s most desirable high schools in October, four months before Bowser forced Wilson to resign when news of the transfer became ­public. Wilson’s account is at odds with statements by the mayor and her top aides that they didn’t know his daughter had been given a coveted seat at Woodrow Wilson High School, a campus in Northwest Washington with a waiting list of more than 600 students. That transfer bypassed the lottery used to award scarce seats in the District’s top public schools and violated a policy that bans preferential treatment for the children of government ­officials.
•    Washington Post: D.C. Council member David Grosso (I-At Large), who chairs the education committee, said Monday he will hold a hearing into the circumstances around the school transfer and ask the mayor, Wilson and Niles to testify under oath. Council committees can subpoena witnesses who refuse to appear voluntarily. “We will be looking to get to the bottom of this,” Grosso said. “I feel like it’s time for us to have a public conversation, under oath, about what happened.” The mayor has repeatedly said she first learned of the transfer on Feb. 12, when D.C. Inspector General Daniel W. Lucas informed her that he was looking into the circumstances surrounding the placement of the chancellor’s daughter at Wilson High.