The Pampa Chamber of Commerce held their August Power Hour luncheon on Tuesday, with guest speaker Superintendent Hugh Piatt providing exciting new updates happening on Pampa ISD facilities, followed by the 2026 Lemonade Day awards ceremony where some hardworking, creative kiddos were recognized and rewarded for their efforts during the Lemonade Day event that occurred on August 8.
Superintendent Hugh Piatt
“This is going to be my sixth year as superintendent and my twelfth year here in Pampa. When we got here, we realized that Pampa is just like this little slice of heaven and we just love being here. You all welcomed me and my family and I thank you for that. Thank you for serving and for leading this community. We’ve got a lot of exciting things going on-five years ago we started working on a strategic plan and a lot of things have changed in those five years. It was an amazing plan, and in that plan we did a lot of things. We became Harvesters during that time and the schools changed to grade-level schools and we’re seeing the benefits of that now. There was a lot of angst about that, but I was just out at the 6th grade meet the teacher event last night and all those kids looked so comfortable coming into the Junior High. We added phonics back into our curriculum and all kids get to go through the same experience through school at every campus. So we finally have some continuity and foundation laid and it’s starting to get better. In that strategic plan, 62 different things that we worked on during those five years changed and we think most of them were for the better. A new plan started during the spring, and we have four goals that we want to reach.”
“The first one is the student experience. If you’ve been following at all, public education and school districts aren’t seen as the heros anymore and are looked upon with criticism. The state legislatures even think we’re bad people, but I can promise you this in Pampa, there is not one I can speak badly about and I love them all. We have great people in every one of our schools who care about our kids and want to see them successful and are willing to invest positively in their lives and become role models and help them, and our kids need that. Our enrollment continues to decline. In the years that I’ve been here, we’ve lost almost 800 students, and that is something that is happening all across the panhandle. If you look at TDA, they’re predicting in the next three years that the 60 school districts in the panhandle will lose 4,000 students or more in that time. So this downward trend is everywhere. Then the state offered vouchers which is awesome, except that they didn’t make a plan to what happens when the enrollment goes down. Over 60 districts in the state have deficit budgets because they didn’t know in advance what was going to happen. To me it’s like a competition, I don’t want to come in second. So our job is to become the premier district in the panhandle so that we get people dying to get into Pampa. So what does that student experience look like? We’ve got great people, great kids, great parents , a great community who support us-so how do we turn it into something even better? That’s what we’re looking at for the next few years.”
“The next part is the College, Career and Military Readiness. In the last 30 years, CCRM has never been so important as it is now. Used to, everybody needed a four-year college degree and once they got their degree, the schools didn’t worry about you, and what happened to the 60% of kids who didn’t get college degrees? Now there are 11 different pathways where our students can walk straight out of the district into a job. We have certified nursing assistants before they leave, there’s certified phlebotomists, and we have those who earned welding certificates so they can easily get a job. So these 11 different pathways grant industry-based certifications before they even leave high school. We didn’t have that even ten years ago. So it’s pretty exciting especially with all the extra things going on, like we just cemented a deal with Clarendon College for industrial maintenance including HVAC, electrical, and instrumentation-all those things around here that we need people a part of.”
“The next one is talent. We need to maintain the group we have. We need to keep the kids, we need to keep the families, and we need to keep our teachers. We’re in a very competitive environment right now in the area. Any teacher from any school district can get a job anywhere now. We’ve been able to do some incentives for our teachers and we’re also holding them all accountable. Our teachers get coached by admininstrators and instructors, and all the administrators are being coached by Region 16. So we are getting better every day. If our teachers do okay in student growth and their evaluation, they can earn about $7,000 extra for the next five years, if they do better than that, they can earn about $15,000, and if they do really well, they can earn about $25,000.”
“The last thing is our facilities, which is our current goal that’s been going on for quite a while. There will be no more tar smell on campuses because all the roofs have been completed. The high school is getting a new elevator and there will be a track resurface which will be great. There’s a new Career, Technology and Education and Fine Arts building going up. The bond that was passed in 2023 was for $130 million, and part of that bond we knew going in was not going to go to all of it. So $72 million is what is being spent on the CTE and Fine Arts building at the high school. That is set to be completed in April of 2027. If you would like to tour it, we’re starting to set those up on Friday at 1 o’clock, so if you want a tour, park in the lot of the Mary Ellen and Harvester Church of Christ across the gate, we would be happy to give you a tour. It’s absolutely worth it. There’s this idea of keeping up with the times and setting kids up for jobs that don’t even exist yet that we’re trying to create spaces for. For Travis, the new addition will be opened in August of 2028 and we’ll move the 4th and 5th graders into it and then we will gut and renovate the old building to make it new and move the 2nd and 3rd graders from Lamar into that.”
“In between now and then, something really exciting happened. We couldn’t do all of the 2023 bond until our tax base increased, but we were dreaming big and hoping something would come about. The things we thought would come about didn’t, then Google showed up to build this data center. We’ve had a lot of discussions about the value of that data center because it really dictates how much it adds to our tax base and how much of the $58 million we can build. As of yesterday, that valuation is going to come in we hope to $1 billion. If it does, that and the $58 million we’re going to get to spend will go to all new facilities. So we’re very excited about that because it’s a reality we may get to see by next April, and we hope to start construction on the next phase somewhere in the summer of 2027. The next phase involves athletics, the ag farm out at Recreation Park, a new bus barn, and then we’ll upgrade playground equipment and restrooms at Wilson and Austin. And we’re also looking at adding another road at the Junior High, so we’re working with the hospital and the City of Pampa to see where we can put a road in. We’re looking at an indoor multi-purpose facility, new gymnasium, new baseball/softball turf, lights, redoing the tennis court-just a lot of great things. We have a lot of plans and we’re looking forward to doing more.”
“I answer to seven people on the board, and they have to make some tough decisions. It becomes, ‘what do I do financially?’ They’re responsible for making decisions of what to do with the tax payers’ money. Three years ago when they were talking about the bond, they were talking about 25 cent increase in taxes, and the most we ever raised it was 2 cents. This year from where we were in 2023 to now, it will be down 7 cents. And our budget is always on point and I think that’s important for everyone to know.”
“Lastly is our people in the Pampa school district. Never before in my years-I’ve worked for three different school districts-have I ever worked for people that care so much about our community and our kids. I’ll go out on a limb and say that more than a quarter of our employees are Pampa graduates. They’re invested here, they care, and they want your kids to have great opportunities and are willing to work hard to do that, and I’m really grateful for that.”
Q&A
If you start Phase Two next year, how long will it take?
“For athletics, it’s hard to say because if we put turf on the baseball field, we can’t do that during the season and can we get it done in between? What comes before what? My hope is that we break ground, and in two years we’re done. I think we can do that and maybe have it done by the 2029-2030 school year.”
Are you adding cursive to the curriculum?
“It is in the state’s list of things coming, but it doesn’t say cursive, instead it says writing, but that’s what they’re talking about. They are already doing it in 5th grade.”
Is the construction at Travis going to be 2nd and 3rd grade and are you concerned a little bit about the traffic?
“The thing about traffic is you have to have a place to drop off and pick up, that’s the traffic. The beauty about that campus is it’s 16 acres and there’s five roads. So we will have buses on one side and we can literally have four different grade levels on four different roads. We would be able to run two lines and then two more lines on the north and west side. That building is going to be built to hold about 1,000 kids, but it will have probably have less than 800. We didn’t want to make it too small, but not too big. But the number one thing on our list was the traffic flow.”
What is the schedule and intent for Austin?
“Right now it’s going to just stay kindergarten and 1st grade. If we continue to get smaller, at what point does Wilson maybe move over to Austin or does Travis hold 1st through 5th? I don’t know and it really depends on the enrollment. We talked about a new parking lot on the Beech side with some new playground equipment and things like that, but we don’t really know.”
When do you anticipate the TIA incentive program to take place at all the other campuses?
“This year the Junior High testing areas, those students will take a pre-test, a middle-of-the-year test, and an end-of-the-year test, and the teachers will be scored on their growth. They will get their check in August of next year. All of the other teachers in the district except for a couple then becomes eligible in the 2027-2028 school year and they’ll get their first check in August of 2028, so it’s after one year.”
Academically, would you say Pampa is a strong-performing Texas school?
“It depends on what measure you look at. We can talk about As, Bs, Cs, Ds, and Fs, but take for instance 3rd graders take a test one day in English and another one the next day in math. Those two days are all that matters, so to answer your question: not yet. Before we went to grade-level schools, we had four independent school districts operating our elementarys, and when they got to 6th grade, there were so many gaps, we didn’t know where to start. So now we have a foundation with teachers teaching at the grade levels the same thing, and so it will start to grow.”
With no further questions, it was time to move on to the winners of the 2026 Lemonade Day event with introductions by Chamber President Cortnie Hale.
2026 Lemonade Day Results
“If you know the Pampa Chamber of Commerce, you know we do events back to back, but very few of our events directly involve our kids. The only event that we have that is directly tied to our children is Lemonade Day, and it is by far our favorite day of the year. We have board members that go out and get involved, and every time they come back, they say, ‘Lemonade Day is the best day in Pampa!” Today we are celebrating our winners, and this year, we had 25 stands on our map and I think there were probably 30+ stands open that day. Young entreprenuers all over town showed off their skills and everything they learned at Lemon U. This year we did Lemon University where there were seven mission participants had to complete. They had marketing, customer service, creating their recipe, and putting their stand on the map. They worked with Ryan from the EDC to put goals into place, they worked with Tim with FirstBank Southwest to put together a budget, and Hannah from ACFCU worked with them on marketing. For each completed mission, they were given Lemon Bucks and they got to go shopping. We set up a little store and they got to buy the products for their lemonade stand. So by offsetting that costs, hopefully parents only had to pay for any extras they wanted to put into their stands. They could buy powders for mixed lemonade or lemons or pitchers and drink dispensers. They could even buy lemon candy. It was so much fun.”
“Our Lemonade Day could not happen without our judges because we asked them to go out to every single lemonade stand and drink the lemonade. The first thing I want to do is acknowledge our judges. Seth Harrison is actually the chairman and his wife Hannah of course went with him. Nick Stevens is a member of the Chamber, and he is also representing his dad because Xtra Auto was our Customer Service Champion sponsor. Flogistix was our marketing sponsor, and our amazing assistant Jimena is always so great.”
“The first award we are going to give is the Best Lemonade to Aikeisha’s Lemonade Stand. This awards celebrates a product that stood out for flavor, quality, and the kind of cup that makes you want to come back for another.”
“The next award is for Best Lemonade Stand, which is a strong stand that catches your eye, welcomes customers, and brings business to life. This stand was creative, inviting, and ready for business. Congratulations to Sunny Sips by Everett.”
“We have one stand that stood out to everyone, so we created the Helping Heart Award. Success is not only measured in sales-one of the lessons that the kids learned in their budgeting is about spend, save, and give. They’re not just learning about making a profit, they’re learning about giving back to the community. It’s measured in kindness, encouragement, the ways we treat people, and what we do with the things we’re given. This award recognizes a young entreprenuer who lead with heart. Congratulations to When Life Gives You Lemons.”
“Flogistix was our Marketing Champion sponsor. Great marketing gives people a reason to notice, to remember, and to choose your business. This stand brought creativity, personality, and a clear message. Congratulations to Sour Kids.”
“Profit takes planning, smart spending, strong sales, and the discipline to understand numbers. This entreprenuer put those skills to work and earned an outstanding result. This was sponsored by ACFCU, and our winner is Kinley’s Faith Over Fear Lemonade, where she earned $395!”
“Our Customer Service Champion is sponsored by Xtra Auto, and this award is about a welcoming and positive attitude, turning a customer into a fan. This is a business that makes people feel seen, appreciated, and glad they stopped by. You probably saw her marketing on Facebook, and maybe even stopped by because of it. Congratulations to Freshly Squeezed by Me.”
“Our final award is Lemonade Day Pampa’s highest honor. It recognizes the full picture: planning, creativity, customer service, marketing, financial skills, business knowledge, and the courage to turn an idea into something real. This young entreprenuer showed us what it means to dream boldly, work hard, and follow through. Our 2026 Youth Entreprenuer of the Year is Jesus Loves You Lemonade by Emma. Emma, what did you learn from Lemonade Day?
“I learned that if you work hard, you get good results.”
