Fayette County school board will negotiate contract changes with acting superintendent

With Fayette County Public Schools Superintendent Demetrus Liggins on paid leave, the Fayette County Board of Education on Monday authorized chair Tyler Murphy to negotiate a contract addendum with Acting Superintendent Bill Bradford.

The addendum will address “appropriate details,” including pay relative to his extra duties, according to board attorney Josh Salsbury.

“As Dr. Liggins is currently on leave and you have already appointed Dr. Bradford to be your acting superintendent, as things progress, it’s appropriate to go ahead and address a contract addendum for Dr. Bradford,” board attorney Josh Salsbury told the board.

Bradford’s current salary is $200,684, according to FCPS’ salary database. 

In mid-June, Bradford said he hadn’t asked for more money as he moved into the acting superintendent role.

“My priority has been on the fiscal health of Fayette County Public Schools, and I have focused predominantly on what is in the best interest of the school district. I have not engaged with the Board of Education in any conversations regarding compensation beyond my core role as assistant superintendent,” he said.

School board members took no action Monday when they exited closed session after meeting in private for more than an hour.

They went into closed session, according to Murphy, to discuss pending and threatened litigation and to discuss pending investigations that could lead to employee discipline.

FCPS has hired a law firm to review Liggins’ employment and the school board has placed him on paid leave pending the outcome of the review. He has claimed the board violated the Open Meetings Act when they placed him on leave, and appealed the board’s denial of that to the Kentucky Attorney General.

Fayette school officials have not said specifically why Liggins is on leave or why his employment is being reviewed by a law firm.

In June, an attorney for Kentucky lawmaker Adrielle Camuel, who is also an employee of FCPS, said Liggins recently threatened the lawmaker with legal action “relating to her public criticism of his leadership.”

Camuel, a Democrat from Lexington and an FCPS administrative assistant, reported the threat to lawyers for the district on June 5, Camuel’s lawyer, Hannah Wilson, has said. Liggins was captured on video last month slipping a piece of paper under the door to Camuel’s office at district headquarters, according to a copy of the video obtained by WKYT.

Camuel’s lawyer says the piece of paper purported to be an email with advice to Liggins from lawyer Heather Gatnarek, with the firm Kaplan, Johnson Abate and Bird.

The email claimed the firm had met with Liggins and, without naming Camuel, advised the superintendent that criticism of his leadership was defamatory.

But Kaplan, Johnson, Abate and Bird officials told the Herald-Leader they did not write the email, it was falsified and the firm had never worked with Liggins. Liggins has denied writing the email or placing it under Camuel’s door.

Liggins was placed on paid leave in June, after a school board meeting in which the board met in closed session for an extensive period of time.

Liggins contends this violated Kentucky’s Open Meetings Act. He asked the board to reverse its decision and give him his job back, accusing them of violating the act. Board members on June 24 declined to meet Liggins’ demands. Last week, Liggins filed a formal Open Meetings Act appeal with Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman.

He wants the attorney general to declare unlawful the school board’s June 10 closed session when he was placed on paid leave, his attorney Amos Jones said.

Appeal to the Kentucky Attorney General

The appeal, filed by email with the Attorney General’s Open Records/Open Meetings Decisions unit, includes 11 exhibits and invokes state law and the Kentucky Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in the case of Carter v. Smith, a previous news release from Jones said.

“That decision has stood for years to prevent exactly what Dr. Liggins says FCPS did here: convert a superintendent’s separation-related communication into a supposed ‘resignation notice,’ close the doors to the public, and then return with a major employment action affecting the superintendent’s office,” the news release said.

FCPS’ June 24 denial is now the centerpiece of the appeal, the news release said. In that response, Jones said FCPS continues to characterize Liggins’ June 9 communication as a “resignation notice,” while also admitting that Liggins had written before the meeting that his email “was not a resignation,” that he remained superintendent, and that he wanted the meeting canceled. The June 10 agenda stated only: “Closed session to discuss resignation notice.”

Immediately after the closed session, Jones said in the earlier news release, the school board placed Liggins on paid administrative leave, retained VanAntwerp Attorneys to investigate him, and appointed Bill Bradford as acting superintendent.

The appeal asks the attorney general to find that the Board violated the Open Meetings Act, reject FCPS’ June 24 denial, and require the board to rescind the actions flowing from the alleged illegal session, including the administrative leave, the replacement-superintendent designation, and the VanAntwerp investigation authorization.