Michael Wiltshire / Clarence Norman Jr. : Birds Of A Feather Flock Together

Wiltshire was fired on 9/4/02, right at the beginning of the school year by Charles Majors, Brooklyn High Schools Superintendent, for incompetence. Two dozen parents lead by Assemblymen James Davis and Clarence Norman Jr. , successfully staged a rally at City hall steps to force chancellor Klein to reinstate him. I suspect that Bloomberg was behind the decision : mindful of his predecessor's divisive tenure mired with confrontation with minorities, he did not want to start his mayoralty with a showdown with them. Norman and Davis made a calculation along the same lines -- a thinly veiled, political blackmail.
A year later, fate struck : "New York City Councilman James E Davis, a combative, upstart politician who took on anyone and everyone" was killed "inside City Hall by political opponent who accompanies him to Council meeting, then pulls out pistol and shoots him in front of scores of stunned lawmakers and onlookers..." (New York Times 7/24/03)
Three years later, Clarence Norman Jr., relentlessly pursued by district attorney Charles J. Hynes for corruption and theft, ended up in Rikers Island on triple felony on June 5, 2007 :
"“Mr. Norman is here to voluntarily surrender for the execution of sentence,” said his appellate lawyer, Richard E. Mischel. Justice Martin Marcus said: “Sentence is executed.”
And with that, Mr. Norman was handcuffed and led out a side door. The entire hearing took 20 seconds." New York Times 6/6/07. The nature of the charges ?

• "Assemblyman Clarence Norman's 15-year reign as the powerful head of Brooklyn's Democratic machine ended in disgrace yesterday when a jury convicted him in a crooked campaign finance scheme.
  The verdict forces the 54-year-old political kingmaker to give up the Assembly seat he has held for 23 years, his party post and his law license - even before he is sentenced Nov. 29 to up to four years behind bars." (NY Daily News 9/28/05 )
• "Norman, 55, has already been sentenced to two to six years for campaign-finance crimes, and was acquitted last year of charges he double-dipped from his Albany travel expense account. He is free on $110,000 bail while the guilty verdicts are appealed. But the current trial on grand larceny and coercion charges in Brooklyn Supreme Court promises to deliver on Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes' long-awaited vow to expose a system in which judgeships were routinely for sale in the largest Democratic county in the country. " NY Post 1/30/07

With such background in mind, and the tradition of patronage in which politicians milk the NYC Public Schools -- even Joel Klein's own Deputy Lam was forced to resign over such practice --, I cannot imagine Clarence Norman bailing out Wiltshire without quid pro quo : I wonder how many positions Wiltshire reserved for Norman's cronies.