- June 15, 2026
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A field of candidates is campaigning to replace Sarasota School Board member Bridget Ziegler, in a race that could impact the future of the district.
On June 4, they had a chance to introduce themselves and share their vision during a forum held by the Tiger Bay Club.
As Heidi Brandt, Teresa DeWitt and Jimmy Glover took the stage at Michael's On East, they addressed a range of issues affecting the operation of the school district and also the perceived politicization of the school board, despite it being a nonpartisan board.
The tenure of Ziegler, a conservative activist and the current board chair, which began in 2014, has drawn national attention and has been controversial for reasons that include her policy positions calls for her resignation in 2024.
Candidates began by emphasizing their support for public education.
Heidi Brandt, the president of Southside Elementary's parent-teacher council, positioned herself as the only candidate with children currently in the school district.
However, Glover has four children who graduated from Sarasota’s school district, with his daughter having just graduated Booker High School this year.
DeWitt has 9-year-old twins who attended Southside Elementary for a little over a year, after which, she said, she decided to homeschool them during COVID. She said she and her husband have been working for three years on a plan to transition her daughter back to Southside.
Brandt's campaign emphasizes the topics of empowering parents, investing in high-quality teachers, improving school safety and enhancing workforce training.
Her website shows she is affiliated with the Republican party, but she says she will keep her role free of politics.
“I would say I'm the voice of the parents, the teachers and the children in our community, and that's what is motivating and driving me,” she said.
DeWitt has participated in the district's Student Advisory Council and served on the Superintendent's Committee. Her campaign site says she "performed community research for the Sarasota School Board, which resulted in a role in auditing a variety of academic programming."
She has also participated in Moms for Liberty, a conservative organization that Ziegler co-founded.
While introducing herself, DeWitt led with a discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"I want to paint a picture of four years ago," she said. "Parents were locked out of campus. Masks were put on children's faces, grandparents weren't allowed to be on campus. We weren't allowed to do graduation, and there was an illegal mandate made by board members ... and so, what we had to do as parents is, we had to show up, we had to push back, we had to speak up… I am the candidate who has been there in the fight.”
DeWitt also positioned herself as favoring parental choice as well as fiscal responsibility. She said she was running on behalf of those who had left the district, as well as her children, who are nonverbal and have Exceptional Student Education and Individualized Education Plan needs.
Glover's roles include the board president of Star Lab, a K-3 private school serving the Newtown area, vice chair of the city’s Parks, Recreation and Environmental Protection Advisory Board, and a board member of the Friends of the Betty J. Johnson North Sarasota Library.
Glover said he was running because he believes the citizens of Sarasota think there has been a lack of leadership on the school board.
“When I've been going around, what I've heard is that they feel like they are not being listened to, and as a result, there has been a trust that's been broken here in Sarasota,” he said.
Among the most contentious issues in the school district today are financial difficulties surrounding the voucher system.
During April, the district announced that 136 teacher roles would be “unassigned," while officials have cited vouchers as a major contributor to the district’s financial challenges.
Glover said he was looking to work within the existing system, stating the voucher system was originally intended to serve underserved students.
“We've always had choices here in Sarasota County," he said. "The only time this has ever become a problem was once we took the income restriction off of the vouchers and people who are already sending their kids to private school started using the vouchers as a subsidy,” he said.
He called for more accountability, stating that the amount of regulations for public schools vastly outweighed those of charter schools and homeschooling.
DeWitt emphasized her support for school choice.
“If you are truly for parental choice in terms of education, those dollars will follow the student, and you will rejoice in that, because that will make the family and the students happier,” DeWitt said.
She said the lift on income limits was a state legislative decision that the board would have to follow, and said that wherever they attend school, students should have the same opportunities.
She also said the district was still suffering from the impacts of the loss of COVID-19 funding. The district brought in $115 million in pandemic relief funding from 2020 to 2022.
“One of the things we need to acknowledge is that we are in a recovery mode,” DeWitt said. “All the school board members, even the ones that are here today, will admit that we received a huge influx of dollars in 2021 with COVID dollars. Those sunset in 2024.”
Brandt praised the district's initiatives, including its prevention of takeovers by Schools of Hope and its rebranding of Brookside Middle School as Gulf Coast Academy at Brookside.
"Our board is re-imagining our schools, and I want to be along for the ride, because I can see the marketing campaign, I can see what they're doing, and it's brilliant," she said.
Another major issue in the district is that of grade level reading. The importance of students being able to read at or above grade level by the third grade has been widely noted as a major benchmark.
Glover said there is a variety of reasons students may not read at grade level. He cited students being hungry, not coming from two-parent households and the trauma happening in underserved communities. He said eighth grade was an important benchmark for reading scores as well.
Glover said these students need to be connected with tutors and to be "shown some sort of love, that they feel wanted." He suggested bringing in retired teachers to help current teachers overwhelmed with classroom management, by focusing on specific students.
“That's the type of out-of-the-box thinking that we need to do right now. It's all hands on deck," he said.
DeWitt said the district needed to bring in parental volunteers, recruiting them from the time kids are welcomed back to school. She also said that in 2017, phonics was removed from the school district before being reinstated.
Brandt emphasized the importance of phonics, noting she is a student reading partner at Southside.
"Our school has reading partners," she said. "We can bring this back to every single elementary school. I'm going to work really hard to do that."
Another question the candidates received was "How are you different from Bridget Ziegler?"
DeWitt and Brandt both said they would avoid emphasizing politics.
“What I will say, is that board members who dedicate 10 years of their life, and they work with Governor DeSantis, and they create infrastructure that we're all going to inherit—you may like her, you may not, but she's worked really hard,” DeWitt said.
She said the district had to “get on the same page.”
“I want to make sure that I stay focused on the agenda items, your tax dollars, literacy rates, and not the politics,” she said.
“I am my own person, my own candidate,” Brandt said. “I am running for the right reasons. I will not bring any political agenda into the school board. That's how I differ. I am here for the kids, listening to you. It won't be about any politics.”
“That question right there represents what we've been enduring in the school board room for the last six years,” Glover said. “However, unlike my opponents here, neither one of them could say anything bad about Bridget Ziegler. I have no problem saying anything bad about Bridget Ziegler, because you know what? She's one of the reasons why I'm running.”
Glover said that under Ziegler, the board had not only a lack of leadership, but a lack of compassion. He noted Ziegler’s resolution affirming the district’s cooperation with United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“My daughter's friend did not go to school for two weeks because of the ICE resolution, because she was fearful that she would get snatched up by ICE,” he said. “That alone, that lack of compassion, made it imperative that I continue to run for school board in District One. We cannot have fear in Sarasota County because of that.”
