Missing purchase orders, overspending. FCPS ramps up oversight, tightens controls
Fayette County officials said Wednesday they have discovered school employees were sometimes buying things without purchase orders and racking up charges on school-issued credit cards without prior approval.
Acting Executive Director of Finance Amy Smith told the Fayette County School Board Finance and Accountability Committee the district is now ensuring all staff know they must have a purchase order to buy anything. All purchases on school-issued credit cards must all have prior approval, Smith said.
The lack of financial controls meant the district often overspent.
“There were purchases made whether there was money in the budget or not,” Smith said.
That further exacerbated the district’s financial problems, Smith told the committee. Smith, who has been in the job for 10 weeks, and Interim Chief Financial Officer Kyna Koch are working to right the district’s finances after it was discovered earlier this year FCPS had misstated its finances for decades.
Koch was hired in March.
The findings are the latest development in a more than year-long saga involving the district’s finances. The district has confirmed three people in the finance department, including longtime director Rodney Jackson, are on medical or other leaves.
Superintendent Demetrus Liggins has also been placed on paid administrative leave in a separate incident not directly connected to the district’s financial upheaval. State Rep. Adrielle Camuel, D-Lexington, who is also an FCPS employee, found an email allegedly from a law firm that stated any criticism of Liggins is being investigated as defamation. Liggins has denied he placed the email under Camuel’s door, and the law firm has denied authoring it. A different law firm has been hired to investigate.
The district has had to make cuts in its budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1, including eliminating 120 positions, cutting staff work days and eliminating $250 per teacher for classroom supplies. The district has not said how much in spending it cut from the preliminary $711 million general fund budget.
The district had overstated its finances for years, records show. For example, in fiscal year 2025, from July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025, the district reported it had $8.5 million more in tax revenues than it actually collected.
Smith and Koch are trying to unravel what went wrong, examine policies and procedures and tighten controls. Koch said Wednesday they hope to have a more detailed action list of polices and procedure changes after a school-financed audit is complete and State Auditor Allison Ball’s office finishes a special examination.
The Weaver and Tidwall, school-financed audit should be released in the next two months, Koch said. It’s not clear when state auditors will complete their examination.
Smith and Koch said they were also upping training with school bookkeepers and principals to ensure all the district’s purchasing policies are followed.
Bad debt, problems with grants
Smith also said they discovered in 2025 the district missed a deadline to be reimbursed for a federal grant.
That meant roughly $500,000 had been spent under the grant, but the general fund had to cover the cost.
Koch said the district has grant managers. However, those grant managers largely work on the grant prior to it being awarded and were not allowed to manage the grant after the money was awarded.
That will change, she said.
Additionally, since 2018, the district also had to forgive $8 million in bad debt that its schools owed central office. School districts can be charged by central office for such things as security at events or bus travel for sports teams. Smith said the district discovered some of those accounts had not been collected.
“There were times when the school said they had paid it, and we found that they had,” Smith said. There were other times when it was not clear if the school had paid or not, she said.
Koch said there may have been times when central office may have forgiven the debt to a particular school for various reasons. But all schools need to be treated the same, she said.
Internal auditor among cuts to staff
Of the 120 positions the district eliminated, one was the internal auditor.
Internal auditors typically help governments and organizations track spending problems, including whether purchase and credit card policies are being followed.
Koch said the district is not abandoning internal audit. It may look to an outside or external firm to provide that service to the district as it moves forward.
This story was originally published June 18, 2026 at 10:24 AM.
