Over the years, we have heard stories and have even seen for ourselves that when some government employees are not competent, instead of being reprimanded and then fired, as would happen in private business, the offending employee is moved to another department to get the problem out of one supervisor's hair and have it placed in another's lap.

Sometime this process keeps happening until the offending employee becomes a supervisor themselves. We have had an example of this in the Newton County School System for years.

There has been an administration employee that has been transferred from one position to another, causing apparent havoc at each stopping point, because her immediate supervisors, the last two retired superintendants of schools, refused to do their job and remove this employee from the system.

It was the proverbial kicking the can down the road problem, until our current superintendent, Dr. Gary Mathews, picked the can up and made sure it was put away forever.

The school administrator in question had her day in a court on Wednesday of this week. She was judged by the elected county school board, and it took 13 hours to hear the claims and counter claims of her alleged incompetence.
The school board agreed with the accusations that the administrative employee, Dr. Sylvia Jordan, had been incompetent, insubordinate and willfully neglected her duties. Her dismissal recommendation by Mathews was upheld.

A wrong has finally been righted. We praise Dr. Mathews' efforts in removing an employee of this poor caliber from our school system.

We are disappointed in the inaction of our two former superintendants. Because of their inaction on dealing with Jordan it cost the Newton County taxpayers $103,000 per year in salary plus benefits to sustain an employee who, in private business, would have been replaced years ago.