The Pampa Independent School District held a regularly-scheduled meeting on Monday evening at the Pampa ISD Administration Building with proper social distancing and screenings upon entry into the building.
After shuffling around the board duties, naming Matt Brock as board president, Lance DeFever as vice president and Luis Nava as secretary, the Board received a presentation from chief financial officer Todd Hubbart.
Hubbart provided an update not only on the upcoming school year’s budget, but also discussed how the 2019-20 school year’s average daily attendance (ADA) will be weighed.
“They are averaging our ADA through the fourth six weeks (up until right before Spring Break) and looking at, what they called, a historical average,” Hubbart said. “Basically it’s the 2018-19 ADA through the fourth six weeks and into the total sixth six weeks and coming up with a percent. That’s what we’re applying to our 2019-20 ADA.”
The 2020-21 budget is being built with an ADA of 3,200 students. The early indications of the budget could have a projected surplus of $2.64 million, putting the fund balance at $8.3 to $8.4 million. This provides the District with four months of operating cost in the event of a disaster. It’s important to remember, these are just projections, the surplus could be more or could be less.
As far as the tax rate, the tax rate to be announced for the public hearing reflects an maintenance and operating rate of $.9764, an interest and sinking rate of $.2650 for a total rate of $1.2414.
This is lower than the 2019-20 rate of $1.2550.
Neither the budget nor the tax rate were approved at this meeting, but there will be a public hearing on June 29 at the Pampa ISD school board meeting to discuss the budget and tax rates.
The Board did approve a stipend addendum to the 2019-20 Pampa ISD stipend plan.
Associate Superintendent of Human Resources and Administrative Services Dr. Nathan Maxwell said the stipend, which is $100 to each employee, is to award staff for their hard work during the COVID-19 digital learning situation.
“The last nine weeks or so our employees have been providing services remotely to our students and have done an outstanding job with that,” Dr. Maxwell said. “We’ve had nothing but good feedback. We’re really proud of the work they’ve done.”
The stipend will hopefully offset some of the costs for phones, internet, digital services and other needs staff may have needed to work from home.
“It hasn’t just been teachers,” Dr. Maxwell said. “It’s been a lot of our para-professional staff everywhere, in all categories.”
The cost to the District will be $50,000 for $100 each to about 500 employees.
As for the 2020-21 compensation plan, Dr. Maxwell presented the Board with the possibility of raises to employees ranging anywhere from one percent (roughly $200,000 on the budget) to two percent (roughly $400,000 on the budget).
The plan also includes an additional $25 toward employees insurance plans which is $155,000 ongoing cost to the District.
“The budget was built at looking at two percent,” Dr. Maxwell said. “But we just wanted to bring this to your attention and see what you think.”
The Board asked Dr. Maxwell what the employees raises were in 2019-20, to which he said it was anywhere from 4.5 percent to six percent depending on years of service. But that raise was to get the District caught up with other Districts and also due to House Bill 3 requirements.
“This is strictly across the Board two percent,” PISD Superintendent Dr. Tanya Larkin said. “It’s still conservative, but it keeps us competitive (with other districts). They (the State) are telling us to be very conservative because we don’t know what the future holds.
But, if we don’t continue to pay our people, we know what the future holds: they won’t be here. If we can do it. We want to try.”
Pampa ISD starting pay for teachers is $46,000 and the pay raise would bump it the starting rate to $46,500 to $46,700.
The Board didn’t approve the compensation plan as it was a discussion item.
Looking ahead to what the 2020-21 school year could look like, the obvious optimistic look is 100 percent face-to-face instead of 100 percent remote as 2019-20 ended.
There is also the possibility for hybrid or short-term closures.
Dr. Larkin gave the Board a presentation on the numerous possibilities, starting with who decides what school will look like.
“It starts, of course, with the United States President and the Center for Disease Control,” Dr. Larkin said. “Then it goes to the Texas Governor and the Commissioner of Texas Education Association (TEA). Even UIL (University Scholastic League) has a say in some of it.
“Then, even with our graduation plan, I had to take it to the Gray County Task Force to get approval. Then finally we got to make the decision.”
The CDC offers a number of guidelines for opening schools in August in regards to high-risk employees and students, procedures as far as disinfecting and hand-washing, social distancing and monitoring absences, quarantines and plans for if students/employees get sick. The CDC guidelines can be found at this link: https://bit.ly/36BLdDO.
Board president Matt Brock asked if the governor says schools can open in August, does that mean Pampa ISD opens.
“What I suspect he will say is if you meet a certain criteria, you can open,” Dr. Larkin said. “Depending on our conditions, we may or may not be able to open.”
TEA has recommended schools build intersessional calendars equipped with flexible scheduling to provide cushion should schools have to close for a period of time.
“It’s spreading the year out more and giving yourself some cushion throughout the year,” Dr. Larkin said. “The problem with that is you don’t know if/when COVID-19 is going to hit. So, you build your calendar and say you plan for the normal cold/flu season. It may hit earlier or it may hit later.”
One calendar features starting earlier in August with two weeks off for Thanksgiving, four weeks off for Christmas and three weeks off in March with school going into June.
But this is just one of the options TEA is looking at.
“You give yourself more, pre-planned quarantine time,” Dr. Larkin said. “The whole intent is to stretch everything out so you’re still getting your 75,600 minutes. But it’s not so compressed and there is no wiggle room in case you have to shut a campus down for two weeks.
Several questions are still up in the air, however, including teacher contracts, length of the school days and how instruction time will look with additional time for disinfecting, washing hands and serving breakfast/lunch in the classrooms.
Another caveat is families needing childcare in the event students can’t go to school and parents have to go to work.
“If anything can come from this it’s an open dialogue in our community for help with parents and families,” Dr. Larkin said. “Asking people in our community like churches that are already standing up and helping with childcare. We would need our whole community to help us.”
Dr. Larkin said at this time there is no plan to change the start and end dates for the 2020-21 school year, but the Board approved the calendar stating there could be changes made to the calendar because of COVID-19.
The Board also approved the following items:
Consent agenda
• Approve board minutes: April 27, 2020
• Approve 9-12 ELA instructional materials adoption and purchase
• Approve upgrade to the virtual network
• Action to approve purchase of a learning management system for on-line learning
Action items
• Monthly financial reports
• Action to approve a stipend addendum to the 2019-2020 Pampa ISD
• Approve submission of waiver requests to the Texas Education Agency due to COVID-19: 1. Submission of a waiver for missed school days/instructional continuity while closed due to COVID-19 2. Submission of a waiver to extend the Annual Financial Report due date to Nov. 27,
2020 due to COVID-19
• Approve SMART goals for College, Career, and Military Readiness (CCMR)
• Approve SMART Goals for Early Literacy and Numeracy as part of the HB3 requirements
• Amend Board Policy CCGB(LOCAL) concerning economic development applications and agreements for appraised value on qualified property under the Texas Economic Development Act, Chapter 313 of the Texas Tax Code.
• Approve dates/times for summer school for English Learners. Dates are set for June 8 through July 9. This provides help to students in the community need it and a small-scale opportunity for the District to try various social distancing measures in classrooms. Public transportation is provided and is for students entering Kindergarten and First Grade.
