If Lexington wrecks started so early, why weren’t city, schools prepared? | Opinion
Sometimes it seems like the Fayette County Public Schools and the city of Lexington are trapped in some strange, snow-packed death spiral. They could both pull out and save each other, but over and over, they descend into chaos, facing the white-hot heat of a working parent who just had to cancel a really important presentation.
On Tuesday morning, in some kind of nightmare deja vu, students and teachers were trapped at schools and bus stops because Fayette County Schools waited until the last minute to call a two-hour delay, then called classes off altogether. Meanwhile, morning commuters had already begun their trips, sliding around truly icy, dangerous roads all over town because there was no salt.
As of 11:45 a.m., Lexington police had stopped taking calls for non-injury accidents because they were dealing with more than 150 wrecks since midnight.
Now, I know it’s impossible to predict the weather, and you can’t ever win, whether you cancel school or not. But if Lexington police started responding to wrecks as early as 2 a.m., reflected by information shared by the mayor’s office, shouldn’t that have given both city and school officials a heads-up that the “dusting” of snow had turned into something more ominous?
That way, Superintendent Demetrus Liggins could have made plans for delays, and Mayor Linda Gorton could have called out some salt trucks. The first Facebook messages from the city about the streets didn’t start until about 9:15 a.m.; its X account made no mention of snow until 8 a.m. The school system didn’t post anything until around 8 a.m. either.
At least Liggins had the grace to apologize for the lack of communication. We didn’t get word from Gorton until an email at 11:30 a.m. which told us to drive carefully because of icy roads, which, thank you very much, drivers already knew because they were sliding around on said roads much, much earlier.
Gorton’s office also said Streets and Roads had pre-treated hills, bridges, and overpasses overnight, and helped the state with roads they are responsible for, like New Circle.
They might have done that because forecasters like WKYT’s Chris Bailey had told them the weather could affect the morning commute.
But why were these two leaders — who repeatedly have taken stiff criticism for snow-day snafus (look no further than the comments on the aforementioned Facebook posts to see how that’s going) — not on top of this situation? You’ve just gotten done explaining why the roads were so bad that school was shut for two weeks. Now you both get to relive all the questions about your capabilities as you stare down the face of a state audit for Liggins and what should have been an easy primary for Gorton.
This is not about test scores or affordable housing or politics. It’s about basic competency. And on Tuesday morning, the superintendent and the mayor flunked again.
This story was originally published March 17, 2026 at 11:51 AM.
