Conservative School Board Training HQ Launching in Sarasota, Florida

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis addresses the crowd before publicly signing HB 7, "individu
Daniel A. Varela/Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
Hannah Knudsen

The Leadership Institute is coordinating with conservative school board members — namely, Sarasota County School Board Chair Bridget Ziegler — in opening a national school board headquarters in Sarasota, Florida, which will offer a conservative track for candidates and elected officials at the school board level.

During the last election cycle, Florida Republicans put an emphasis on school board races across the state as Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) identified those races as “some of the most important” elections of the year.

“I think what we’ve found is that those [school board races] are some of the most important elections that we’re able to vote on,” the governor said during a press conference in Daytona Beach, Florida, in March 2022.

“I think you’re going to have a huge amount of voter interest in these August and November elections for the school boards in the various counties,” he said at the time.

“I don’t know that I ever got involved in school board races before, but we’ll be involved this year. We want to help people; they’re going to help our kids,” the governor added.

And indeed, he did just that, endorsing conservative, pro-parent, students-first school board candidates across the state of Florida and touting what has been dubbed the Florida Educational Blueprint.

Bridget Ziegler—now chair of the Sarasota County School Board—was among those leading the way, blowing the lid off the inner workings of the left’s monopoly on education and bringing the issues to the forefront, particularly in the wake of the National School Boards Association essentially asserting that concerned parents issuing challenges at school board meetings were possibly engaging in a form of “domestic terrorism.” As a result, Attorney General Merrick Garland tasked related agencies with investigating what was described as a “disturbing trend,” and the Florida School Boards Association cut ties with the head organization.

Breitbart News spoke to Ziegler about her experience in this fight exclusively last year:

Ziegler said she began to see things that were “shocking” to her upon joining the board, as it operates very differently than the business world. She described going to the Florida School Board Association meeting, a chapter of the National School Board Association, and at the time the unions were suing the governor and legislature for taxpayer scholarships — something she advocated for. It was odd, she said, for them to utilize taxpayer dollars to send her to this conference where they were touting issues she was against. Seeing this, she and other conservative board members formed the Florida Coalition of School Board Members, which she described as a “small but mighty group” that passed a ton of legislation. While effective, she said the group did not grow exponentially, despite others showing their support, because there was “very much of an indoctrination to school board members, to policy makers.”

“When you get up there and are elected, you’re automatically part of this association and they tell you that your job is to support the superintendent. [It’s] not about protecting, supporting, representing taxpayers or focus on financial stewardship or … it as very much about no dissenting, very much groupthink, get in line,” she said, as this same tactic appears to be the common theme in school boards across the country. Many people, she continued, subscribe to it, even though they claim to be “conservatives.” But when they get on these boards, they “lose their backbone.”

At the time, Ziegler highlighted the shocking level of “coordination … seen at the local level with the Democratic Party at the national level and state level with our local school boards.”

“There is a very strategic, coordinated effort with these foundations,” she added.

However, the monopoly is, indeed, crumbling — at least in the Sunshine State. It is not just the National School Boards Association– which described concerned parents as domestic terrorists — that will provide training for school board members anymore. On Thursday, Ziegler announced the coordination with Leadership Institute to launch a conservative track for elected officials at the school board level.

“We finally have the keys to @LeadershipInst 6,000 sqft Florida headquarters in Sarasota, which will serve as a hub for our rapidly growing School Board Training Program!” she revealed. 

“With our #LearnRight Summit just two weeks away, we can’t wait to share details about all of the exciting projects our team has been working on & are ready to launch!” she added:

This comes months after a series of leftist defeats in school board races across the Sunshine State, flipping major school boards from liberal to conservative. In that time, DeSantis has continued to tout the Florida blueprint for education, hosting a training session for school board members across the state in December.

“For too long, these school boards have not reflected the values of the communities that they were supposedly elected to serve,” DeSantis said, pledging on social media to continue to help school board candidates in 2024 as well:

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