NORTHWEST ARKANSAS — Editor’s Note: The following editorial was first published by Northwest Arkansas Newspapers LLC on March 8, 2010, and is reprinted here for our readers.

Every once in a while, our justice system surprises us by delivering a result seemingly inspired by - get this - common sense. It’s an increasingly rare event in an age when some lawyers excel at converting frivolous claims into big paydays, so we have to stop and admire it when it occurs.

We refer you to the story about the former superintendent of the Decatur School District.

Dave Smith was hired in July 2007 to guide the Decatur schools. Unfortunately, he guided them straight into a ditch. At the end of his first year, the district suddenly found itself $60,000 in the red and facing a $600,000 deficit by the end of the following year. The state took over, dissolved the school board and told Smith to take a hike.

Smith left, but not without demanding that the district honor the threeyear contract he had signed earlier that year - a contract worth $300,000. Smith filed a lawsuit in an attempt to collect on his contract.

Last month, however, Benton County Circuit Judge Doug Schrantz dismissed Smith’s suit, saying that, once taken over bythe state, the district had no authority to honor Smith’s contract. Once the state took over, it had every right to replace Smith, Schrantz said.

The ruling is based on Schrantz’s interpretation of the law, of course, but happily, the judgment aligns with our perception of what’s fair. Common sense says that if your performance is lousy, you don’t deserve to keep your job. And you certainly don’t deserve hundreds of thousands of dollars not to do that job.

Millions of humble Americans who work without the security of a contract have accepted these simple rules of the real world.

We know this case is farfrom over. Smith’s attorney said he will appeal. No surprise there. Nonetheless, there is satisfaction in knowing that Smith has at least one strike against him.

A nearly identical story is playing out in the Greenland School District, another district that barely avoided consolidation in 2008.

Former superintendent Ron Brawner, who was blamed for not providing proper leadership and allowing the district’s finances to get out of hand, was fired when the state took over Greenland. Like Smith, he sued for compensation he says is owed to him - about $176,000 - under his contract. The Greenland School Districtargues that the contract was never formally ratified by the school board. Brawner’s lawsuit is still pending.

The most maddening thing about Smith’s and Brawner’s lawsuits is that, by trying to milk thousands of extra dollars from their former employers, they seek to further cripple the school districts that they already had driven into the ground.

No one wants to see public dollars spent fighting lawsuits like these, but we’d rather not surrender to the ex-superintendents’ demands. How many bank executives have we seen collect millions of dollars in bonuses, even after the banks flopped on their watch?

We do not want our schools rewarding performances the way some banks do.

The good news is that, following Smith’s and Brawner’s tenures, both the Decatur and Greenland school districts have emerged from intensive care and are recovering nicely. LeRoy Ortman (in Decatur) and Roland Smith (in Greenland) came out of retirement to set those schools on the right path, and they did so in a remarkably short time. In January, both districts were removed from the state’s fiscal distress list.

The fact that Ortman and Smith are succeeding where their predecessors did not is proof that, yes, leadership matters.

Opinion, Pages 5 on 03/24/2010