Commentary by Chris Smith, editor-in-chief of Clarksville Now:

At sunrise on Feb. 24, 2018, after a tornado ripped through the Farmington subdivision in Clarksville, I went to the scene to get pictures and video of the destruction. After doing some initial reporting and handing off duties to members of my team, I found myself joining some others trying to help a distraught woman find her missing dog, trapped under the remains of her house.

We weren’t very organized, and we were at a loss for how to proceed. Then a man behind me started issuing instructions to our group, calmly and orderly. “OK, let’s move this piece – you two get that end, and we’ll lift from here.” That sort of thing. For about a half-hour, he directed our efforts as we uncovered the dog and goaded it to safety.

I could swear I recognized that guy. But everyone was wearing sweats and T-shirts and baseball caps. Later that day, it hit me: That was Millard House, director of Clarksville-Montgomery County Schools.

That was during House’s first year as schools director, and he’s been bringing that same calm, effective leadership for four years now, most recently during the COVID-19 pandemic, a disaster even more uncertain than a tornado.

House didn’t get a raise in 2018. Or 2019. Because of COVID and the economic impact on schools, he didn’t seek one in 2020. But now, with an improved financial picture and teachers able to get $6 million in pay increases this year, there’s a plan to make things right and raise House’s annual base salary, from $165,000 a year to $230,000.

That’s set off a bit of a firestorm from some on the Montgomery County Commission and in the community who argue the roughly $60,000 raise is too much and the total salary is too high. One of the arguments is that it’s ridiculous for the schools director to make more than the county mayor, sheriff and highway supervisor.

Let’s unpack that a bit.

Underpaid by scope of job

Here are the current salaries of four of the top-paid government officials in Montgomery County:

  • Director of Schools Millard House: $191,538*
  • County Mayor Jim Durrett: $170,574
  • Sheriff John Fuson: $120,610
  • Highway Supervisor Jeff Bryant: $120,477

(Source: Tennessee Comptroller’s report, Fiscal Year 2020 *Includes additional benefits.)

That’s a lot more than most of us make. But most of us aren’t managing multi-million-dollar budgets or work forces of thousands of people.

The head of a government department effectively functions as a CEO responsible for a large employee work force. Which employer would you guess is the largest in Montgomery County? It’s not Hankook. It’s not Tennova Healthcare. It’s CMCSS, and by a wide margin:

  • CMCSS: 5,100 employees
  • Agero: 1,700 employees
  • Trane: 1,640 employees
  • Tennova: 1,250 employees
  • Montgomery County: 1,207 employees
  • City of Clarksville: 1,100 employees
  • Hankook: 1,000 employees

(Source: CMCSS.net and Industrial Development Board)

The head of a government department also functions as a CEO responsible for a major budget. So how do those budgets compare?

  • CMCSS General Fund: $315 million
  • Montgomery County General Fund: $95 million (includes Sheriff’s Office and Highway Department)

(Source: Montgomery County 2019-20 budget)

So, the school system has a budget that’s more than three times that of the county, and it has almost five times the number of employees. But the person in charge of the school system currently makes only $20,000 more than the county mayor.

This in itself is inappropriate. The schools director should be paid much more, based just on the expertise and experience required, not to mention the size of the managed work force and budget.

But no employer operates in a vacuum.

Underpaid among competition

In order to keep talent, we have to pay that talent enough to make them want to stay, and we have a bad history in Clarksville-Montgomery County of not paying enough.

With 42 schools and 39,000 students, CMCSS is the 7th largest school district in Tennessee. That puts us in a certain class when it comes to how much we pay our leaders. The average base salary for Tennessee school superintendents with more than 25,000 students is $231,906, but we’ve been paying a base salary of $165,000.

You get what you pay for, and if we want to retain talent like House, and to be able to replace him when he moves on, we need to keep up with other school systems with a competitive salary. That’s not “trying to be Nashville.” That’s capitalism. That’s supply and demand. That’s how it works.

The same goes for teachers by the way. It’s a lot harder to raise the salary of 5,100 employees than it is for one, but as soon as the community is ready to support a teacher raise with a tax increase, we can do that too.

What’s the consequence of trying to get a bargain for your top-level employees? Lawsuits, wasted money, scandals and bitter disputes. We’ve had a great run of recent school directors, so those who are newer to town wouldn’t know, and some of us longer-timers might have forgotten, but we haven’t always had the best leadership at the top of CMCSS.

It’s a far better deal to pay for what we want: The kind of leader who can deliver top-notch education for our kids, and, when necessary, help see us through a disaster, whether that’s a tornado or a pandemic. No superintendent will make everyone happy – we’ve seen that time and again. But this one is top caliber, and if this is the kind of leadership we want, we need to be willing to invest in it.

Our kids, our teachers and our community deserve nothing less.

Correction: Millard House has a master’s degree, not a doctoral degree. The article has been updated.