Liggins’ ‘long-term vision:’ More Fayette kids could pick schools based on interests

Fayette County’s new superintendent, Demetrus Liggins has a “long term vision” for the school district that would allow more students to attend a magnet or special program outside their assigned school.

In addition to traditional neighborhood schools , Liggins said he would like more families to be able to choose schools based on their student’s interests such as fine arts or engineering.

”That’s a long term vision. I would love to see our community go to that,” he said. “But you also have to have quality programs all over because people obviously buy homes in neighborhoods based on schools. By no means am I implying that people would not be able to go to their neighborhood schools, that would always be the first option.”

Fayette County has 35 magnet, specialty and gifted and talented programs ranging from a STEM girls school to fine arts schools to agriscience and other career-related programs.

There are 6,500 students in 31 of the magnet and special programs, district spokeswoman Lisa Deffendall said.

There can be fewer spaces than applicants who want to get in the special programs and there’s often a waiting list.

Liggins said he wants to open up more seats in those programs and explore offering other programs based on families’ interests and what industry might need in the future.

Liggins said he is not suggesting that such a dramatic change is in the works immediately.

”We’re obviously not there yet. That requires an overhaul of transportation,” Liggins said, and the district currently is hard pressed even to get kids to neighborhood or assigned schools given longstanding transportation staff shortages.

He said facilities would have to be renovated and there would be implications for personnel.

Liggins said the district must also first get to a point where it is not dealing with COVID on a daily basis.

Liggins said his first priority is that every school in the district is high performing.

Liggins said a principal at a special program recently told him, “The great thing about this program is every day a child gets to come and do something that they are successful at.”

“And I thought, ‘Why can’t every child have that experience?’”

Liggins also said that he wants more students living in poverty to be able to enroll in the programs.

“I’ve heard that many of them don’t see that as an option because of the application requirements and the transportation barriers,” he said.

Because of housing patterns in Lexington, the district has many schools serving high concentrations of students living in poverty, he said. “That’s not ideal.”

”I was the second child born to a teenage mother and we grew up very poor. My brother Randy went to the school in our neighborhood where the majority of his classmates were living in poverty like us,” he said.

“I don’t think I was any more intelligent or had any more potential than my brother,” Liggins said, “but I went to a school where there were students from a mix of economic backgrounds. I excelled academically and Randy did not, even though we both grew up in the same home and had the same potential.”

Economics and other demographics should not determine the success of a student or a school, he said.

Under Liggins’ long term vision, kids across the school district would be able to learn the same content through a different lens.

At Brenda Cowan Elementary, students learn through the integration of arts education within the classroom curriculum, enhanced through special areas of music, creative writing, dance, drama, media art, and visual art.

Fayette County’s School Report Card compiled by the Kentucky Department of Education for the school year 2020-2021 said that 54.3 percent of the district’s 40,362 students were economically disadvantaged. 52.9 percent of students were identified as being of a race other than white. 8,316 students were identified as gifted and talented in that report.

Penny Christian, vice-president of Leadership Outreach for Kentucky PTA and a Fayette County parent, said what Liggins wants is for everyone to have the same opportunity that every kid deserves.

But she suspects that he might get some pushback in the community because of attitudes that have been expressed previously during school redistricting efforts. When plans were proposed for students living in poverty from just one zip code to attend schools in more affluent areas, some parents balked.

Christian said she could get behind Liggins’ idea. But first, she said, every school in Fayette County regardless of the neighborhood they are in, “deserves every resource, deserves quality teachers, and deserves the same high expectations that you would have in these other programs.”

This story was originally published February 8, 2022 at 5:00 AM.