It’s been nearly two years since Antwan Wilson arrived from Denver to take the reins of the Oakland Unified School District, and he’s just now emerging from the trial by fire he has endured.

As he nears the halfway point in a four-year contract, Wilson, a 44-year-old African American man, remains undeterred, with his eyes fixed clearly on the job ahead of him.

“My primary focus is the kids,” Wilson said. “There are people who think I’m defiant or confused, but I’ve never been confused about who my No. 1 client is.”

What Wilson wants is to raise academic achievement across the district.

After about six months on the job, the test of his administrative abilities began.

It started with little comments about his all-too-perfect attire and seemingly arrogant air. But all hell broke loose when Wilson began proposing significant changes in the 48,000-student school district, from redesigns at five district schools, to a universal application form for charter and district schools, to an inclusion policy to merge special-needs students into conventional classrooms. His redesign proposal was interpreted as an antidistrict, pro-charter-school stance.

The under-the-breath comments soon spilled across the dais, and Wilson was besieged by a small group of a half-dozen critics who came to board meetings to call him every name in the book, from an Uncle Tom to a practitioner of Jim Crow laws to all manner of obscenities.

The vitriol got so bad that African American religious leaders and local NAACP officials intervened at school board meetings on the superintendent’s behalf — and it has helped.

Power struggles

The bottom line is this: Oakland’s resident activist community, with the full support of school labor unions, would like nothing more than to wrest control of the district from Wilson — and it certainly wouldn’t be the first time it’s been tried. In 2003, the state took over the insolvent district, and state-appointed administrators managed it until 2010.

But as long as Wilson has the support of a majority of the board, he’s the captain of this ship, responsible for its navigation, route and success or failure. His and his alone.

Wilson was born into poverty and suffered the indignities that come with such an upbringing, but the race-based insults put his resolve to the test.

“I’m not going to stand by while someone who doesn’t look like me accuses me of carrying out some form of Jim Crow,” Wilson said. “I teach my own kids that no one can take your dignity and only you can control your temper. I tell them that I know who I am. I know my history.”

Trish Gorham, president of the Oakland Education Association, said the actions of a small group of activists pale in comparison with the uncertainty created by some of the sweeping changes Wilson has proposed.

“There are disruptive policies causing some chaos in schools, mass movements of principals and calls for quality schools that are not being supported in a bottom-up way,” Gorham said. “These are unilateral decisions. It’s not collaborative, and while he may feel a rush to get things done, we think things should be done in a more thoughtful way.”

Meeting teachers, parents

Wilson countered Gorham’s criticism by pointing out that he holds Tuesday open-forum meetings with teachers and Saturday appointments with parents.

School board member Roseann Torres echoed Gorham’s thoughts, but not everyone agrees.

The majority of the seven-member Oakland school board supports Wilson’s efforts to improve the district.

“Politically, Oakland is tough, and somewhere in the back of (critics’) mind, they believe he will betray the city’s legacy,” said James Harris, president of the school board. His trial by fire “is the only way we do it in Oakland.”

Wilson is by no means perfect and has stumbled along the way.

The most glaring example was his decision to hire Lance Jackson as the district’s interim facilities director. It wasn’t Jackson’s qualifications that raised eyebrows, it was his dual role as the chief operating officer for SGI Construction Management, the company hired to manage the district’s $11 million bond program.

It was a decision made of necessity, and one he would make again, Wilson said.

“The district was in the same situation the year before I came, and they made the same decision with the same person, and no one said a word,” he added.

Winning support

From the outside looking in, Wilson’s efforts are regarded by at least one education advocacy group as exactly the medicine the district needs.

“I respect and admire his unequivocal and unapologetic focus on quality and equity for kids, and the reality is that change is hard and imperfect and messy,” said Ash Solar, executive director of Great Oakland Public Schools. “I think he is pointing us in the right direction.”

Wilson is paddling upstream against the current in an effort to reform the culture of a school district that has been dysfunctional for decades.

He’s trying to steer the school district back onto its primary mission as an education factory, not a job factory, but proposing such drastic change is sure to upset the status quo.

“He has vision, values and is holding up kids as the highest equity value in the district,” Solar said.

“He’s just running into the Oakland special.”

Chip Johnson is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. His columns run Tuesday and Friday. Email: chjohnson@sfchronicle.com