On Monday, April 28, Pampa ISD held their monthly board meeting, the last one for Mr. Luis Nava as he closes his 10-year chapter serving on the board.
Mr. Nava is currently sitting at place 4 on the board, having been the board president prior to that, and on May 3, the citizens of Pampa will find out which candidate, Collin Rains or Kaleb Snelgrooes, will take his place.
During his tenure serving on the board, Mr. Nava has helped take part in many of the positive changes all of the schools in the district have and will continue to see and witness, including the passing of the bond that has now jumpstarted the construction and growth of the high school campus, and the transition of all the elementary schools in the district that has proven to be a success for both teachers and students.
Through every decision that has been made by the board, the focus has always been in the best interest of the teachers, staff, students, as well as the community as a whole, and it’s that focus Mr. Nava wants to see continue with any member, current and incoming, that serves on the board.
School board members are able to serve indefinitely without term limits and unless they lose an election or decide to retire from the board, some members have gone on to serve for 30 years or more.
Mr. Nava feels that the district is in a really good place now and is ready to pass the torch.
“It’s been a pleasure to serve on the board and I’ve served with some extraordinary people,” Mr. Nava said. “When I got on the board, my wife was a teacher and because she was in the district, I had a line of information from the boots on the ground. My daughters were in junior high and high school, so I also had a line of information from the parents that also had kids in school, so that was helpful. Of course Hugh Piatt and Tanya Larkin did an excellent job getting us information too, but I wanted to see both sides. I’m also a deacon at First Baptist, so I was able to get information there too. I’m still at First Baptist, but my wife is retired and I have daughter that will graduate from A&M in a couple of weeks, and another that is at Texas Tech down in Midland, so I’m ready to pass the torch. I’ve lost the lines of communication from a lot of the parents. The parents that I knew, their kids are grown now and they have kids in school, and with my wife retiring, I know less and less of the staff. Misty, Cade, David, Emily and Richard and Denise still have kids and family in the district, so those communications are still there for them.”
“David, Misty, Cade and Emily, who we call the kids,” Mr. Nava smiled, “have really stepped up in filling the role of a board member. The board is in a good place, the district financially is in a better place than it’s been in years. When I got on the board, we were at a $3 million fund balance, and we are sitting at $30 million now. Heath Parker and Todd Hubbard before him have done an excellent job with our finances. A lot of it is the way they categorize stuff, because if it’s not done right, the State won’t send you any money. Dr. Porter has also done an excellent job.”
“Financially, the district is in good shape and I feel that we are headed in the right direction academically. I know the grade level schools have a big part in that and we will start seeing results. The passing of the bond where we are trying to set the district up for the future with some new buildings for the CTE program at the high school and the new building for Travis-we’re looking at the future.”
“I’ve always tried to base my decisions on a premise of the what, the how, and the why. The what: that’s the board, the board decides as a group of what the district is going to look like, what the finances are going to be and what we want for our education system and what we want to provide for our students to be successful. The how is administration, we decide that we want our academics to be such and such, so the teachers figure out how they’re going to do it and one shouldn’t cross to the other. I think the most important is the why. Why do we do this? It’s the kids, it’s the staff, and it’s the community. That’s what I’ve tried to keep in mind making my decisions. And I’ve always had the idea that I would never take from the district. I’m here to serve and it’s not for my recognition. I’ve been given a gift by God to see the whole picture, not just a single agenda item for the district. The pre-kers are just as important as the 5th graders and the 8th graders and the Seniors, it’s all of them. I can’t lose focus on the whole picture. I’ve been blessed by serving on this board. Hugh and I have always had the goal to leave it better than when we came, and I can say that this board as made me a better person and a better community member.”
Mr. Nava will certainly be missed by those who have served with him and by those who he has graced with his soft-spoken and humble presence. We at the Pampa News congratulate him and wish him the absolute best in all of his future endeavors.
The board meeting started with the Spotlight on Excellence for two Pampa ISD staff members: Len Mixon who has served as a bus driver for the last 20 years, and Tamara Gutierrez who is the district nurse, and it was under her guidance and encouragement that the PHS students saved 290 lives through blood donations through the Coffee Memorial Blood Center earlier this year, the most in the area.
Next on the agenda were the consent items which include: approving the March 24 board minutes, approving the monthly finanical reports, approving the quarterly financial reports, approving the Certification of Provision of Instructional Materials, approving the purchase of lift equipped mini-bus, approving the sale of delinquent tax property, approving CTE purchase that include Dell computers, moveable pens/panels for the agriculture program, and welding equipment, approving the purchase of a motorcoach carport, purchasing a computer server, and approving the 2025-2026 Choir trip; all were approved.
Next item was approving the Pampa ISD Board of Trustees Training Hours Report, which was approved.
After the board went into an executive session, they went over the remaining items on the agenda, first with approving the Bank Depository Contract with First Bank Southwest.
Next was to consider taking action on bids for the purchase of all right, title, and interest held by the District in surplus real property and any improvements thereon formerly used as the Pampa Learning Center and related buildings, located at 901 and 1011 Frost Street.
“For the last year we have been trying to sell those buildings, and we have reached out to several companies that buy and sell portable buildings to see if they were interested in taking those off our hands,” Director of Operations Troy McClendon said. “The old portable at the high school they were ready to write a check for, but they were not interested in these. So those buildings have been listed as-is. One of those buildings has been identified as having asbestos containing materials in it, so if people were to try to do something with that building, we would have been responsible for abating that asbestos. We put that out for bid as is and we did receive two qualifying bids for that.”
“There’s one for $2,000 and there’s one for $10,000.”
The board approved the bid for $10,000.
Next was the facilities update report also presented by Troy.
“For the roof replacement projects at Lamar, Austin and Travis are all on schedule. Nothing unexpected has happened so far and is moving right along. We are focusing on four classrooms at a time. Junior High should start at the end of this week weather pending. With the rain forecasted, that may be pushed to next week, but they are ready to get started and are just waiting for the STAAR testing to wrap up. The new track at the high school is off to a really good start. The base underneath it was fine so we don’t have to use any contigency money to redo that. The old track has been removed, the bottom layer has been prepped and they got the first round of asphalt poured last week and were scheduled to finish today, but the asphalt plant down this morning and weren’t able to deliver, but it’s scheduled for tomorrow. That asphalt will need to cure so that will take us up until graduation, so they’re going to back away and get their equipment out and everything cleaned up to let us get prepared for graduation and come back the week after graduation. At that point they will pour the surface and get ready for striping, and that is roughly a 3-4 week process that will carry into June and should be right on schedule. The new administration freezer is in and it is freezing cold and is running well. Hall’s is continuing to come out once a week and check to make sure it is all still running as it should be and will continue to do that for about a month. The Fine Arts and CTE demolition has wrapped up and we are in a waiting period not. The demo finished ahead of schedule and the soil package is ready to go out for bid and the structural package is not quite ready. So instead of getting all of our soil and foundation and everything ready and letting it sit for another month and possibly getting rained on, we are just holding off until we can do all of the soil and foundation with the electrical and plumbing done and then move into the structural part. I’m hoping maybe about another one month pause. We were on schedule and everything was running smooth enough to where it’s not going to delay us and we are still set for two summers from now, summer of ‘27. The Travis construction-the first phase of that is the roofing project. We have to change the slope so that it’s not draining in the middle of the courtyard, so no matter what, the first phase is going to be redoing the roof and that is underway right now. We are still waiting on the final plans and final drawings, but everything is on schedule. Our facilities committee met a couple of weeks ago and we were able to discuss some proposals coming in to do a good quality repair job on the Austin parking lot, but we are still waiting to see what exactly that proposal will look like and the price for the parking lot and HVAC repairs at the admin building.”
Next was the accountability report, which scored Pampa ISD at a C for 2023 as a summation of all schools within the district, but with the unification of the schools, the score is projected to improve.
“The move to grade-level schools in my opinion was a quality choice,” Superintendent Hugh Piatt said. “It is one that has the potential to align our district systems and not just necessarily the academic level, but we’ve seen it with behavioral, we’ve seen it with the assessment process, we’ve seen it improve coaching. There are a lot of things that have been moving forward and so in the near future, we want to see something better than a C.”
“One of the reasons I decided to not run for this seat again is because we’ve done a lot of things accountability-wise, academic-wise for the district,” Mr. Nava said. “To be able to keep the same administrators, the same principals, the same staff at all of the schools has some stability to that. This year we’ve had the hard conversations of ‘this is not acceptable. This is not acceptable to our community, this is not acceptable for our board, and it’s not acceptable for our administrators.’ This is from ‘23-but we’ve never been an A campus, we’ve never been a B campus, but now I think the tools are in place to get us there. Y’all are doing the work, the teachers are doing the work to get us on the same page to be successful. That’s one of the reasons why I felt the need to retire-now we’re in a good spot and headed in the right direction. One of the jobs of the board is to hold the administrators accountable and these people are doing that and I’m proud of them.”
Next was the consideration to approve and renew Pampa ISD professional employee contracts and professional educator probationary and term contracts, which was approved.
Last on the agenda was the consideration and action to employ new Pampa ISD professional educators for the 2025-2026 school year, which was approved and the meeting was adjourned.
