Fancy dinners, trips abroad. Will the FCPS budgetary madness ever end? | Opinion
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- FCPS leadership spent $2.5M in six months on travel, meals, and entertainment.
- District faced backlash for budget mismanagement amid rising taxpayer burdens.
- Lawmakers and public call for resignations over spending, travel, and oversight.
Another week, another revelation about the incompetence and arrogance of the people running our school system.
This time around it’s $2.5 million in expenses charged in SIX MONTHS on Fayette County Public Schools credit cards. Fancy meals, specialty chocolates, and ax-throwing parties are apparently part of what this leadership team considers part of day to day operations in EDUCATING OUR CHILDREN.
I’m hoping all caps can signal my distress and disbelief that ANYONE WHO IS ALIVE IN 2025 and has SPENT MORE THAN FIVE MINUTES IN THE PUBLIC POLICY ARENA would thinking using taxpayer dollars — from people whose property tax rates keep rising — in these ways would be a good idea.
Even if, as the Herald-Leader’s report says, some of these expenses were repaid by donors. It seems like school supplies would be a better use of donation money.
Good morale, you say? Good morale comes not from a dinner out, but from knowing you have the confidence and support of the public in doing one of the most important jobs in our public sector.
Professional development, you ask? Deputy Superintendent Houston Barber did not need to go to Helsinki, Finland, for more training, when he and his employees are so clearly in need of a basic accounting class.
Nor, as we learned earlier, did Superintendent Liggins need to spend $7,000 to go to Australia.
This account doesn’t even include the reports from December showing the district had spent $3.6 million on more than 200 trips for administrators and teachers during the 2023-2024 school year, the most of any district in the state.
Did federal Covid-19 funds turn people’s heads into mush? Not since the beginning of tax-based public education has eating out on the taxpayer’s dime been a good idea.
And now the district is in a budget mess, and cuts are coming. Not to mention whatever fun ideas the General Assembly can come up with to punish Kentucky’s second-biggest district.
That’s a group of GOP legislators that came after Superintendent Liggins last week, along with board chair Tyler Murphy.
Rep. Matt Lockett, R-Nicholasville, and I probably do not agree on one issue in the world, but it would be very hard to argue with the list he presented in calling for Liggins and Murphy’s resignation. It was quite ... complete.
It detailed the district’s summer from hell, and the slow drip, drip, drip of dysfunction at our district, including budget mismanagement and a secret tax hike to pay for it, as well as Liggins’ excessive compensation package, along with $25,000 for an executive coach?
Is anyone out there reading the room? You know who else joined the resignation calls? Sen. Chris McDaniel, who lives in Northern Kentucky and CHAIRS THE SENATE APPROPRIATIONS AND REVENUE COMMITTEE. He builds the state budget, including all the money for public schools.
It would be so wonderful if FCPS Board Chairman Tyler Murphy and his voting bloc on the board, could read the room — either the board meetings in Lexington filled with angry parents, or the hearing room in Frankfort where Liggins was recently grilled by lawmakers.
Or the room where a FCPS employee was asked to do a confidential budgeting assignment that went really, really wrong, as documented by reporter John Cheves.
Back in June, Murphy appeared to believe that the defeat of Amendment 2, the school voucher amendment, gave public educators leeway to do whatever they wanted.
“We don’t need lectures from those pushing policies that harm working families and children,” he said at the time. “Our community rejected voucher schemes at the ballot box, and our community will continue to defend public education from political theatrics designed to distract and divide.”
He added: “While we always welcome dialogue and feedback that help us improve, it’s important that the conversation begins with facts and reflects the reality of the work happening in our schools each day.”
Well, the public is losing confidence in the work happening in our schools every day because they don’t think the leadership is doing a good job with the money entrusted to its use.
Look, as we have said OVER AND OVER AGAIN, public education is one of our most precious public resources. Those who squander it, due to arrogance, or incompetence, or both, deserve this kind of public scolding.
Our teachers, staff, and students do not deserve anything that takes time, attention and money away from the really wonderful things that happen in our schools.
Meanwhile, the school board voting bloc that supports Liggins, could stop all this quite easily. They think they are supporting Fayette public schools, but all they are doing is bring scorn and legislative action down upon them.
And in the end, that’s not going to help anyone.
This story was originally published September 29, 2025 at 1:53 PM.
