Here's an article in the NY Daily News about Walcott:

He's everything she was not.

Dennis Walcott, tapped to be the new schools chancellor, is a Bloomberg administration insider who attended and taught in city public schools - and sent his children to the system he'll lead.

Cathie Black, his embattled predecessor, was a surprising pick from the media world with no education experience and who sent her children to private schools.

"I'm just a guy from Queens whose parents were raised in Harlem," said Walcott, 59, a lifelong resident of the southeast section of the borough.

Walcott and his wife, Denise, have four kids and two grandsons. He started out teaching kindergarten and boasts that four generations of his family went to city schools.

"I have visited...hundreds and hundreds of our schools, walked their corridors, held the hands of the students and talked with the moms and dads," he said.

…Even critics seemed hopeful at Walcott's selection.

"I have been able to accomplish things with Dennis," said Michael Mulgrew, head of the teachers union. "We did a lot of work on career and technical education schools, we...were able to expand those schools."

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