FCPS, in plain English

This page is for any Lexington resident who has heard there are "problems with the schools" and wants to know what's actually going on without needing an accounting degree.

Fayette County Public Schools (FCPS) is the public school district for Lexington. About 41,000 students, 38 elementary schools, 12 middle schools, 6 high schools. It's the second-largest school district in Kentucky after JCPS in Louisville.

FCPS is not part of city government. It's a separate legal entity, with its own elected board of education (5 members, staggered 4-year terms), its own superintendent (Dr. Demetrus Liggins, since July 2021), its own taxing authority, and its own annual financial audit. When the city budget and the schools budget are discussed in the same breath, they are still separate books, in separate buildings, with separate elected officials.

FCPS is funded from four buckets, in approximate descending order:

1. Local property taxes. Fayette County property owners pay a school-district property-tax rate set by the board (currently $0.81 per $100 of assessed value). This is the single largest revenue source — about $312 million in FY24.
2. State funding through SEEKSEEKSupport Education Excellence in Kentucky — the state's per-pupil funding formula for school districts. Carries a base amount plus weights for at-risk, English-learner, and exceptional-child students.. Kentucky's per-pupil funding formula. Because Lexington is a relatively property-wealthy area, SEEK provides a smaller share of local funding than it does in poorer districts — about $93 million in FY24, down from $99M the year before.
3. Local occupational taxoccupational taxA tax on wages earned within a jurisdiction, paid by anyone who works there. In Fayette County, both LFUCG and FCPS hold statutory power to levy this tax (KRS 160.605-160.617 for schools).. A 0.5% tax on wages earned in Fayette County. About $53 million in FY24. This is the tax the board tried to raise in May 2025 — the vote that the Attorney General voided.
4. Federal grants. Mostly Title I (high- poverty schools), IDEA (special education), and school nutrition. About $80 million in FY24. This bucket has been shrinking as pandemic-era ESSERESSERElementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief — temporary federal pandemic aid (ESSER I, II, III). The 'ESSER cliff' refers to ESSER III obligation deadlines running out in late 2024, ending a major revenue line for districts. aid expired.

Most of it — about 75% — is people. Teachers, principals, counselors, custodians, bus drivers, central-office staff. The next biggest chunk is operations (utilities, supplies, transportation, food service). Capital projects (buildings, buses, technology refresh) come out of separate funds and sometimes get financed through bonds.

FY26 working budget total: $827.2 million. That's about $20,000 per student per year, which sounds like a lot until you realize it includes everything — teacher salary, building heat, the school nurse, the bus driver, textbook adoption, the new fire alarm at Lafayette High, the special-ed aide who works one-on-one with a student who needs it.

Three things are happening in parallel.

One: the books don't fully add up. In mid- 2025 the district disclosed a ~$16 million operating shortfall in the prior school year. The state's elected AuditorAPAKentucky Auditor of Public Accounts (APA) — the elected state auditor's office (currently Allison Ball) that can conduct special audits of government entities, including school districts. announced a special audit. The board hired an attorney to investigate; the attorney found the superintendent had failed two policy obligations. The board hired an outside accounting firm; that firm described "systemic" finance-department problems. In April 2026, the superintendent disclosed that the accounting issues trace back to 2008. Some finance staff are on leave. There were layoffs. The superintendent took a 10% base-pay cut.

What this means, practically: the district has been doing some of its accounting wrong for a long time, in ways that weren't caught by its annual independent audit. The cash position is real — the district has real money in real bank accounts — but the books that describe that money have had errors in them, and unwinding those errors is hard, slow, and expensive.

Two: the board tried to raise the occupational tax and the AG said the vote was invalid. On May 27, 2025 — Memorial Day weekend — the board voted 3-2 to raise the occupational tax by 0.25 percentage points (roughly $13/month for an average wage-earner). On June 4, 2025, the Attorney General issued OAG 25-07OAGKentucky Attorney General Opinion — a formal legal opinion issued by the AG's office on a question of state law. OAG 25-07 (June 4, 2025) voided FCPS's occupational-tax increase vote. declaring the vote "void and of no effect" because the board didn't publish the required public notice at least one week before voting. The board agreed to comply but disagreed with the reasoning. They have not re-tried the vote.

What this means, practically: a procedural step that is supposed to give the public a chance to weigh in on a tax increase was skipped, and the AG ruled the tax doesn't take effect. The substantive question — should the tax actually go up? — is still open.

Three: when citizens and journalists ask for records, FCPS has a pattern of saying no, and the AG has a pattern of overruling them. Six different times between 2019 and 2026, the Kentucky Attorney General ruled that FCPS violated either the Open Records Act or the Open Meetings Act. That includes a Court of Appeals-flagged opinion (23-ORD-093), a "strike two" finding from the Kentucky Open Government Coalition (24-ORD- 163), and an open-meetings violation in 2026 (26-OMD-009). This is a structural compliance pattern, not a one-off.

The /schools page tracks the things that don't require an investigative reporter to look up every week:

• The audited FY history — revenue, cash balance, audit opinion, year over year. When the next year's audit comes out, this updates automatically.
• The AG decisions count, rolling 24 months. If FCPS gets another open-records or open-meetings finding against it, the count moves and the dashboard flags it.
• The bond and loan posture — the $73M bond authorization and the $110M loan-request memo. These don't have public resolution numbers yet; when they do, this page will carry them.
• The state special-audit status — "in progress" today, "complete" when Auditor Ball's office publishes findings.
• The 10 individual governance events from the 2026 reconnaissance. As new public records land — a court filing in the HQE Systems case, a final report from Weaver and Tidwell, a school-board action on the bond resolution — the corresponding event card updates.

A few things matter as a voter, as a parent of an FCPS student, or as a Fayette County wage-earner:

1. If you're paying the occupational tax, you're paying for FCPS. About $53M of the district's revenue comes from that tax in a typical year. When the board raises or lowers it, the change shows up in your paycheck. The May 2025 vote would have raised it 0.25 percentage points; the AG voided that vote.
2. "Five consecutive perfect audits" doesn't mean what your gut thinks it means. An audit attests that the books were presented fairly under accounting rules. It doesn't attest that the district has enough cash to keep operating next year. A clean audit and a $90M cash hemorrhage can — and did — happen in the same year.
3. Bond issuance during a controls failure is worth watching closely. When a school district that's just disclosed a $16M shortfall asks for authorization to issue tens of millions in new bonds, that's a textbook governance-risk event. It might be the right move (you take advantage of bond capacity while rates are favorable); it might be the wrong one (you're borrowing to plug an operating hole). The bond-counsel opinion and the preliminary official statement are public records when they're issued, and the dashboard will carry them.

Every claim on this page is checkable. You do not have to take our word for any of it.

• Kentucky Department of Education — district financial reports (audited FY24 FA Fayette Co.pdf, 2024-11-14)
• FCPS Financial Archives — annual audits, school-activity-fund audits, vendor lists FY20-FY24
• Kentucky Attorney General — Open Records and Meetings Decisions index (search "Fayette County Board of Education" or "Fayette County Public Schools")
• FCPS board agendas and meeting records (KSBA Public Portal also archives them)

LexDOGE is a public-interest civic-transparency project. We describe what public records say, not what we wish they said, and we do not advance accusations the source documents don't support. If something on this page is wrong or out of date, email info@lexdoge.org and we will issue a correction.