On May 26, 2026, the Pampa ISD Board of Trustees held their monthly meeting, beginning with a Spotlight on Excellence on two Pampa High School students, Kaedyn Wilkinson and Josie Linssen.
“These two outstanding students, Kaedyn Wilkinson who is a senior and Josie Linssen who is a junior, have represented Pampa across the country,” Superintendent Hugh Piatt said. “Everywhere they go, they show up, win medals, and represent Pampa at the highest honor at the highest level. We’re super proud of both of you.”
Next was approving the consent agenda which included:
Consideration and action to approve the April 27, 2026 Board meeting minutes
Consideration and action to approve the monthly financial reports
Consideration and action to approve engagement agreement with Brown & Company for audit services for the 2026-2027 school year
Consideration and action to approve an Interlocal Agreement with the City of Pampa for the demolition/removal of tax-delinquent structures
Consideration and action to approve the MOU with Clarendon College
All were approved.
Next was a report on the proposed 2026-2027 budget presented by Chief Financial Officer Heath Parker, and to set a public hearing to discuss and adopt the proposed budget on June 22, 2026 at 5:45 PM to approve the budget, which was approved.
Next was to consider and take action to set the tax rate to be published in the public notice, which was set at $1.1922, although the projected rate may be lower. The item was approved.
Next was to discuss and take possible action to approve the 2026-2027 school meal prices.
“So every year we have to raise prices just a little bit,” said Business Manager Kelley Porter. “We typically at 10 cents which is the minimum amount we have to raise, which is what we’ve done for a while. But when we start looking at the cost of putting breakfast on the tray, we need to charge $2.00 so we’re closer to that break-even point. When you talk about how much we’re having to supplement child nutrition, part of it is our food costs, and the cost that we’re charging for a full-priced meal is too low. Lunches probably both need to be $4, but that’s a big jump for elementary lunch, so we just did the 40 cent increase. We did the all the breakfast at a 40 cent increase, elementary lunch went up 40 cents, and secondary lunch went up 15 cents. The minimum we have to do is 10, but talking to Region 16 and Mr. Piatt, this is what we felt good about, and this is what we recommend.”
The item was approved.
Next was to discuss and take possible action to approve the District cafeteria charge policy.
“There’s no change to this, however the cafeteria is up for an audit with TDA this upcoming year, and this is one of the requirements that the Board sees. It’s been a while since you’ve seen it, so it just needs to be in front of you again and you approve the charge policy. We are not recommending any changes. All reimbursable meals will be charged to a student’s account, and those students have to have money in their account to charge the extra stuff, not to have a meal. They send weekly charge slips home with elementary school, and then they send monthly charge slips to the junior high and high school. They ask that all balances be paid in full before the end of the school year, however that doesn’t always happen because we’re looking at a $30,000 debt amount. So this talks about if your child is eligible, to please fill out the form. And it also talks about a return check and how they can pay online.”
“Do we need to address that about people not paying their debt?” asked Board President Richard Qualls.
“We can ask, but there’s nothing we can do. We just have to eat it and move in. There are some of the same ones who do it and just walk off. The principals are all aware of who the families are and they try to get them to sign up for free or reduced lunches, but they won’t sign them. There a few exceptions, that if you have knowledge of the fact that the family qualifies, you can go ahead and qualify them, but that’s difficult when there’s an audit and we’re asked for proof. I wish they understood all the things that come with filling out the free and reduced-it’s not just meals that it applies to. As they get older, it’s testing and it’s dual credits, and it’s a lot of things that that form is for. But they don’t understand that.”
After no further discussion, the item was approved.
Next was to discuss and take possible action to approve the contract with Kings Clean for Pampa ISD custodial services, presented by Director of Operations Troy McClendon.
“So last month, you all voted to give us permission to pursue this contract and work on negotiating that, and now we are presenting you with that contract with King’s Clean to manage and supervise our custodial services. They will still remain under the department of operations and we will still supervise custodial services, but this will be a company that manages that for us.”
“So from an operations standpoint, will you be in charge of supervising these people, or how does that work?” asked Dr. Godino.
“So the department of operations is still going to be in charge of grounds, maintenance and custodial. So the buildings and how they look and their appearance will still be our responsibility. Instead of us now doing building walk-throughs and getting that feedback to one of our 30 custodians, now we will just directly work with one of their managers and to let them know what’s being done well and what’s not. They still have to work directly through us and communicate to us, but instead of us managing each one of those individuals, we’re working through the company instead. But they still have to meet our expectations and our standards in the way we want our buildings to look and we are ultimately still responsible for walking those buildings and giving them that feedback.”
“Who do those employees answer to?” Dr. Godino asked.
“So the company would be their immediate supervisor. Those supervisors will set their schedules and their expectations and tell them what they need to be doing during the day, but at the end of the day, they are not an independent entity. They still respond and answer to us.”
“We had a group of employees who were far enough vested in the TRS that we felt that it was only right we gave them that option. Instead of fully pulling them away from Teacher’s Retirement System and putting them directly into Social Security, we gave them the option on that. So even though the work they still do and would be responsible under King’s Clean, they are still on the Pampa ISD payroll so they still have the opportunity to keep that going with TRS.”
With no further discussion, the item was approved.
Next was the Wilson Elementary Campus report presented by Wilson Principal Lisa Smith.
“As of the last day of school, our enrollment was 12 early childhood special education students, 28 in our 3-year-old headstart program, 78 in our 4-year-old headstart program, and 79 4-year-old open enrollment pre-k students, so we had a pretty large enrollment this year. Headstart is a federally-funded program, and districts are not required to offer pre-k universally, but Pampa decided to educate all 4-year-old students and offer that open enrollment to them. For a portion of our pre-k students who don’t qualify for headstart, we get some funding from the state, but for a large percentage of our pre-k students, we don’t get any funding from any outside source except from local funds.”
“This is the vision of a Wilson student, and this is what I frame everything that we do on our campus: they feel safe and are safe, they are loved and love school, they learn how ‘to school’, and they’re becoming kinder-ready. By feeling safe and being safe, we have the ideal campus for that right now. We are the only ones on the campus along with the Bright Beginnings Day Care, so our parents feel safe and secure their 3 and 4-year-old children off at this campus where there’s not older kids. It’s a very tightly controlled situation. We have a smaller staff and we know all of our kids. We have a really great place to dismiss from with our circle drive. We walk kids to their cars, they don’t get to just run out the doors. We have naptime and a quiet campus. From about 12:15 to 1:45, it’s nice and relatively peaceful. We have a lot of flexibility in our schedule because we have this campus that is geared to us. Four-year-olds might need an extra recess, and we have that opportunity. We have a lot of flexibility with our gym schedule and a wonderful gym paraprofessional who allows doubling up, and sometimes she asks for more than one class to come because movement is so critical to our kiddos. Some days they may be just really hungry really early, so they eat 10 or 15 minutes earlier. Because we’re the only ones on that campus, we have a lot of flexibility to meet the needs of those kids.”
“Our kids are loved and love school because we have a great curriculum that’s geared for them. It does meet all the pre-k standards set by the state of Texas, but it is a play-based curriculum which is appropriate for this age level. So they are learning to be students through interaction with their peers, through a lot of social and emotional learning, and through a lot of play and movement and team interaction, but they also get the academics.”
“Our school runs and thrives and routines and procedures, and that’s how they learn ‘to school.’ You would be amazed to see how calm our hallways are. Those kids can walk in a line put up their trays in the cafeteria.”
“And then last but not least, we are getting them ready for kindergarten. Both of our curriculums align with the science of teaching and reading, we use Frog Street as for a lot of background knowledge. They do a lot of social and emotional learning. They learn the basics of math and science and being community helpers, and we use Hegerty as our phonelogical awareness to get them learning on those skills. We do assess in the beginning, middle, and end of year as required by the state of Texas.”
“Some our strengths at Wilson Elementary are we meet all the TEA qualifications for a high-quality pre-k program; when we started the program right before Covid, we hired teachers who didn’t have college degrees, and now all of our pre-k teachers have college degrees and all of them have passed their content tests for certification; we are great with enrichments, meaning if a kid is ready to start reading, we help them and this year we are sending 20 readers off to kindergarten; we have a couple of room in our specialized building that are learning rooms, such as the space-themed science room with astronaut suits, telescopes and all sorts of fun things for them to learn, and also a motor sensory room for kids who might need some regulation. We also have learning room by the bathrooms so when they’re waiting in line to go to the bathroom, they’re also learning. Another strength at our campus is the TIL (Texas Instruction Leadership) has fully embraced 100% of our teachers and 100% of our instructional assistants. Our IA’s are critical to the success of our campus and we treat them like teachers. They have a PLC time each week and they get coached to improve their skills in the classroom so they can be a fabulous future teacher.”
“A few of the challenges that we do have is we have a very skeleton staff. We don’t have much access to the counselor. She really does cover our campus, but she also covers Austin and Lamar, and so we have very little limited access to a counselor or behavioral support staff. We run with one office person, one administrator, so there are times where we are running a little bit short. We do have the two programs and that does lead to some challenges. Headstart has some different requirements than pre-k. Pre-k has a lot more flexibility, and headstart has a lot more paperwork as with any federal program. Headstart comes with a lot more oversight with Region 16, sometimes needed and sometimes not needed. And headstart requires two adults in the classroom at all times including nap times which is why we have cafeteria monitors come during those times so our teachers can get a conference time in. One of other challenges is we still have some facilities that aren’t ‘pint-sized’ in our campus. Bathrooms could use a little help with faucets because it’s hard for the kiddos to push. We have some playground equipment that the kids aren’t allowed on because it’s too large for them, and things like that. But as we have lived in this building, we keep it more accommodating to fit our needs and it has become a really lovely facility.”
Next was the Student Health Advisory Council (SHAC) end of year report presented by Abigayle Barton.
“Some of things we always have to do most of our focus on is our wellness plan because it is critical that we keep it up date. That includes everything from movement policies to cafeteria and how we meet the health of students by what we feed students, and all of those pieces. Another thing we did was renew the Catch curriculum to meet House bill 3908, which is Tucker’s Law. That’s just talking about enhancing the Fentanyl abuse prevention and drug poisoning awareness, so we’ve implemented that in a number of places. At DAP, any student with a vape that has Fentanyl or anything in it, they go through the online Catch program that we added a year ago which went well. It has 10 hours of learning for students, and we also have the Catch Your Breath program in 7th grade with our health class and that is to prevent the dangers of vaping and all of those other things we’ve added in the last couple of years.”
“Our recommendations on moving forward are looking more into the TCU link project, which really aims to bridge the gap between the academic and the social/emotional well-being of children. It talks about healthy movement and how having free conversation helps students socially. Our students nowadays spend so much time sending text messages or Snaps to each other, but they’re not talking as much. So we really want to help bridge that will free movement and casual conversation. The other thing we would like to look at further and expand is social and emotional resources for our children. Our focus for next year is going to be on mental health. I know for our staff, we have counseling that we provide if they need it. It’s completely confidential. Our district receives a bill every month of how many hours, but we’re not given information on the staff member or their family. So we want our staff to feel safe on the mental health side and having that taken care of for them. They get a certain amount of visits a year if they choose to use it, but we’ve heard positive feedback by those who have used it. We want to look at what that would like on the student’s side and how we can boost that. Do we want to partner up with a tele-health service or what are other things we can do for counseling for our students. Texas Tech has some things that other schools are using, so we really want to dig into that for next year to help our students.”
Next was the facilities update presented by Troy.
“We are hoping by July we will have air conditioning in the Admin building. The EMS that we’ve been working on for quite a while, that proposal has now gone out for bids, and they will be open on June 16. Modernatization of our existing elevator at PHS is through Advanced Elevator, who we already have a contract with and have a lot of experience with that system and our high school were awarded that contract through Page & Associates. They will start work on that very soon and anticipate having it completed before students return to school in August. Our final roof over at the high school is close to wrapping up. The crew working on the McNeely Fieldhouse had to hold off a little for some of end of year activities and should be completed in the next week or two. Then they’ll go to the cafeteria and commons are which is all they will have left. The kitchen we couldn’t shut down during school, and the commons they could only access through the circle drive so they couldn’t do that during school. That is scheduled to be wrapped up shortly after the 4th of July holiday. The new addition at the high school is going well with a lot of that new roofing material going on. The water proof sealer is going on the outside before they put on the brick. All of that on the building should be dried in within 6 to 8 weeks, and then they will do the work on the inside with drywall and flooring on the inside. They’re even looking to having the air conditioning in there within 8 to 10 weeks. Everything is right on schedule. Our construction sign has been up there for Pampa Elementary School, so that is moving right along. Pad work is completely finished on that, so now they’re working on site layout and that will be going on all summer. Then by September, the slab will be poured, steel will be delivered, and we’ll start seeing that go up in mid-September. We wanted all of the asphalt that goes around the building to be replaced with concrete, so the new parking lot will be all concrete and not replaced with asphalt because asphalt is just not a good long-term solution for our parking lots.”
Next was the Construction Finance Report, which summarized all ongoing projects and their projected costs vs. their current costs, with no costs going over the proposed.
Next was the enrollment report presented by Hugh Piatt.
“School ended on May 21, and on that day, we had 2,947 kids enrolled. Last year on the same date, we had 3,032 kids, so we’re down 85 for the year. A hundred years ago in 1926, the enrollment surpassed 3,000 for the first time, and in 2026 it’s now below 3,000 for the first time. We’re hoping some of the new things coming to town can curb that decline pretty quickly.”
With no further items to discuss, the meeting was adjourned.
