It was a long night at the Fayette County Board of Education. The kind of meeting where the clock ticks past 10 p.m., the coffee cools, and the words “fiscal responsibility” start sounding like a prayer someone forgot the meaning of.
By the end of it, the board had voted against letting district employees even discuss collective bargaining — and then, moments later, decided a full forensic audit of their own finances was, well, a bit too much for a Monday.
The votes in both cases were 3–2, which is quickly becoming the most Lexington number there is. Monica Mundy and Amanda Ferguson were the lone yes votes on collective bargaining. The majority said they’d rather wait for an “employee-led work group.” Translation: let’s study the problem to death and hope the room empties out before it bites us.
The meeting was a masterclass in stall tactics.
KY 120 United-AFT, the education workers’ union, didn’t mince words. In a post after the meeting, they called out “favoritism and cronyism” and said the vote denied employees “the right to choose their own representation.” They’ve been pushing for a democratic process — a simple question, really: should FCPS employees have a say in who bargains on their behalf?
The board’s answer, effectively: not tonight.
Meanwhile, the same board that balked at letting workers organize also softened its own self-examination. After weeks of public pressure over Superintendent Demetrus Liggins’ $152,000 in expenses — including nearly $28,000 on food and travel — the board agreed to an external audit but stopped short of a forensic one.
That’s like promising to check your bank statement without looking at who cashed the checks.
The irony wasn’t lost on anyone in the room.
The optics are rough: a district under fire for lavish spending, now blocking its employees from choosing their own union and dialing down scrutiny on its books — all in the same breath. You’d think someone would at least stop to check how that sounds outside the boardroom.
But Lexington has a long tradition of mistaking delay for decorum. Our civic leaders are masters of the soft no — the kind that smiles, nods, and says “we’re working on it.”
So where does that leave us?
Teachers are frustrated. Parents are tired. The unions are gearing up for a fight. And the rest of us are left wondering why, in a city that never stops talking about “transparency,” the windows always seem to fog up when the votes get close.
The board may call it “prudence.” The public may call it something else entirely.
For now, the budget holes remain, the books stay closed, and the right to organize is still waiting its turn on the agenda.
And if history is any guide, when the op-eds start rolling in — polished, earnest, and heavily lobbied — they’ll tell us everything’s fine.
Except, of course, it isn’t.