No one likes getting fired. Few among us like to see someone else get fired, either – especially someone we like. There’s a tendency to rally around whomever got the ax, call the boss a meathead and demand the employee be reinstated. It’s probably human nature.

But getting fired is also a fact of life. And when it comes to our public servants, it’s often enough inevitable. In some cases, it’s not a matter of if, but when.

All it takes is for voters to swap out their elected officials for new ones with a new agenda – and the top appointed brass who serve those elected officeholders could get pink slips by week’s end. Nothing personal; just regime change. And that’s OK.

The new elected leadership needs appointed officials who share their vision.

In the past couple of months, two high-profile school superintendents and a prominent police chief, serving in three different Front Range communities, have been nudged aside by newly impaneled elected leaders. Two of the appointed officials – Douglas County Schools Superintendent Corey Wise and Aurora Police Chief Vanessa Wilson – were fired outright. The third, Colorado Springs School District 11 Superintendent Michael Thomas, saw the writing on the wall and agreed to part ways with his new bosses.

Each development garnered plenty of media coverage, thanks in part to an orchestrated outcry from some prominent politicos and other activists whose side had lost the previous election. And each departure drew recriminations from the losing side that ranged from overwrought to off the charts. It’s now time for them and their fans to put things in perspective and move on.

Voters in Aurora, Colorado’s third-largest city, flipped a soft-on-crime majority on their city council last November in favor of a council majority that aims to prioritize public safety. The council and its city manager felt Wilson wasn’t up to that shift in tack. Among other considerations was feedback from many cops who had quit; they said Wilson had lost the confidence of her department’s rank and file.

In Colorado Springs, voters ordered an about-face in the policies of their city’s inner-urban school district. They’d grown weary of a trendy “equity” agenda to which Thomas was wedded. It stoked their kids with woke buzzwords – while their basic achievement scores plummeted. The school board knew its first order of business was to find a new point person.

Douglas County parents and other voters had some of the same beefs – but were especially galvanized last year by Wise and the previous board continuing to impose an unpopular mask mandate on schoolkids. Again, a new super was in order to match a new board’s priorities.

It’s disappointing Wise now appears to be laying the groundwork for a lawsuit, as reported by The Gazette the other day. He is claiming discrimination by the board because he says he stood up for students and staff of color, the LGBTQ community and kids with disabilities. It’s not clear how he’ll connect those dots for a jury, but it’s too bad he insists on hanging on.

The three departing officials arguably are competent and conscientious administrators who deserve the public’s thanks for their service. But that’s really beside the point. What matters is they didn’t share the vision of the leaders who were elected to chart a new course.

Those leaders have a duty to pursue voters’ priorities and fulfill their expectations – not to guarantee job security for highly paid public officials who will land on their feet in any event.

It is public service, after all. It’s no place for sore losers or sour grapes.

Denver Gazette editorial board