An attorney for Fayette County Public Schools Superintendent Demetrus Liggins said Friday they have reached a separation agreement with the district, but Board of Education Chair Tyler Murphy denies such a deal has been struck.
“There is no agreement,” Murphy wrote in a late Friday email.
In a news release, attorney Amos Jones said Liggins would “step down” from his role leading Kentucky’s second-largest school district as part of the alleged agreement.
“The parties’ meeting of the minds comes amid official statements issued by FCPS Board Chair Tyler Murphy and Board Member Amanda Ferguson affirming the aim of honoring the parties’ contract through a compromise by which he would step down this month as superintendent rather than being reinstated following the revelations of FCPS’s Open Meetings Law violation in which the Board effected his abrupt suspension last month,” the release reads.
Murphy told the Lexington Herald-Leader Liggins was asking for more money than the remaining years on his contract.
The superintendent was placed on paid administrative leave June 10 during a special-called board meeting. School board members have not specified why he was removed from the post, but the move follows months of upheaval at FCPS after a budget shortfall last year subsequently revealed deep-rooted financial mismanagement.
Jones said Liggins has agreed to not be reinstated as acting superintendent and instead will receive payment for the remaining years on his contract. His contract is set to expire June 30, 2029.
According to the FCPS salary database, Liggins made just over $393,000 base salary in the 2025-26 school year. Three more years at that pay would total nearly $1.2 million.
He has been at odds with the school board for months, though tensions escalated after Liggins said he reached out to the board asking about a separation agreement. The board claimed he resigned.
Since the dispute, Liggins has filed multiple complaints against the school board, claiming it violated the state’s open meetings law the day it placed him on leave and that he was being punished as a whistleblower.
