When it comes to FCPS leadership, we need a clean sweep of ... everyone | Opinion

There are no clear answers on where to go next with Fayette County Public Schools.

I wish I had a neat, concise solution about what should happen, as the school district’s summer from hell slides into fall with new stories about spending that would make a drunken sailor blush, and new texts that show what a strange and vindictive world exists within the John Price building.

It’s easy to say that Superintendent Demetrus Liggins needs to go. He has shown both a lack of diligence on budget problems and a lack of judgment over his expenses. He and everyone else over there seemed to be under the impression that the good times of COVID funding would roll forever.

He also seemed more interested in building a national reputation than in doing the less glamorous work here at home. How could one trip a month possibly benefit our students? He certainly has not explained that to anyone’s satisfaction.

But getting rid of Liggins would ignore the broader context of problems that exist in the top administration: The deputy superintendents like Houston Barber and Rodney Jackson who plotted a secretive new tax hike to hide financial problems, and then obfuscated about the real financial situation to city leaders as they threw an apparent truthteller under the bus.

(The business community got a real taste of the government sector during the budget workshops.)

Something is tainted at Central Office, and that top layer of administration is clearly to blame.

Then there are the top bosses, the five school board members we elected to keep an eye on all those tax dollars that are supposed to do the most important job in our public sphere: Educate our children.

Board members were kept in the dark on many issues, and two of them — Amanda Ferguson and Monica Mundy — asked hard questions about the budget. But the rest of them appeared to close their eyes as the superintendent swanned around America.

They are set in their own dysfunction, more interested in split loyalties and internal conflict than in working together to solve these issues.

So there we are: We need a clean sweep of the school board, the superintendent and the entire top layer of administration. And that’s not going to happen.

But something needs to.

Here’s the question of the day that nobody is asking: Who is going to take the first step of leadership?

Liggins has made some moves toward personal accountability, admitting that he was not as involved in the budget as he should have been.

But the only concrete action he’s taken is to discipline the one person who seemed to be honest about what was going on. Who’s now suing the district in yet another expensive distraction.

Chairman Tyler Murphy could stand up, get the board to work together and figure out solutions instead of pretending that everything is fine and blaming the media if it is not. Liggins is the board’s $381,767 a year employee. He is supposed to follow their wishes, and if not, they are supposed to find a better solution.

But that avenue seems closed. On Thursday, when asked for a reaction to stories on excessive spending on meals and travel, Murphy said he was awaiting results of state Auditor Allison Ball’s external audit.

“Out of respect to the integrity of the process and to ensure a fair and comprehensive review of all practices, we must allow these processes to happen and the facts to be fully determined before drawing final conclusions,” Murphy said.

“Our School Board’s focus remains on supporting students and staff in the important work happening every day in our classroom.”

That is not leadership; that is what we call CYA’ing.

All of this may be too late. Public confidence may be totally shot. More parents will leave for private schools, more teachers become disenchanted. Murphy doesn’t seem intent on taking that first step, and neither does Liggins.

So we will muddle on until January. That is when the Republican supermajority — already suspicious of urban, public school districts — is sure to show some leadership of its own. All that’s guaranteed is that we won’t like it.

But by then, we’ll have no one but ourselves to blame.

This story was originally published October 17, 2025 at 7:49 AM.