Conservative Sarasota County School Board member Bridget Ziegler, who has been battling the left’s monopoly on education for years, told Breitbart News Saturday that school boards across the country follow a “playbook,” which furthers their monopoly. She urged fellow parents to push back, because they are “on the right side of history.”
Ziegler, who works in the private sector, has served on the Sarasota County School Board for eight years — something she previously never thought she would do, not having thought about running for public office, although she said she has always been passionate about children’s issues. When a vacancy came up in the school board in 2014, her husband urged her to run, and that is when the true fight began.
“When I stepped off that ledge, you know, I went full throttle,” the mother of three said.
To her surprise, many of the “common sense” issues she ran on were “taboo,” including parental rights, limited government, and school choice. And, as a result, the teachers’ union “went crazy.” Her eyes were opened even further at a National School Board Association meeting, where speakers bashed the governor, the legislature, and programs “which we as conservatives were very vocal about supporting,” she said. “It didn’t make any sense.”
Ziegler said it is especially important to highlight that “there is a playbook, and, what I think so many people have now realized, as the result of the great parent awakening after COVID, the same playbook that happens in Sarasota County happens across the state and happens across the country. And it’s largely based on indoctrinating local policy officials all the way down to professional development [given] to the educators, and that trickles down to indoctrinating our students with a very left, progressive agenda.”
The left’s tactics to push this agenda forward, she explained, involve silencing and intimidation. However, parents are now waking up and realizing what is happening.
“This past year and a half has dramatically changed that, and that is what we’re seeing across the country, where we really can turn back the tide and make education … make them [students] successful productive members of society that know how to critically think, not be indoctrinated by the very alarming leftist agenda that is being pushed,” she said.
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Notably, Ziegler was one of the first individuals to push the Parents’ Bill of Rights, which is now a national talking point. She battled for it in 2018, after noticing a number of unnecessary roadblocks that prevent parents’ involvement in different aspects of their children’s education. The “transgender bathroom” was one of the controversial issues at the time, and she witnessed firsthand how the left moved to sneakily incorporate gender diversity guidelines without the knowledge of parents. At the time, she said, the superintendent worked with Equality Florida, a “large lobbying group” for LGBT activists, and circumvented elected officials to institute guidelines about students changing their gender pronouns without alerting parents. Ziegler finally brought it to everyone’s attention and tried to pass an amendment to ensure parental notification, but the effort failed 3-2, as the board was progressive. So from there, she focused on working with legislators directly.
“I was yelling in a crowded room and no one would hear me in 2018, and it was a taboo topic. A lot of people weren’t comfortable talking about it, because you’d be called a bigot or you’d be called racist or you’d be called misogynistic. I’ve been called it all,” she said, noting that politicians too often “cave to the mob mentality.” However, she said she is glad to see it is shifting, because it is paramount for people to speak up for children.
Ziegler encouraged other parents to speak out and get involved, but she emphasized the importance of knowing the mission, as well as having a firm grip on what one believes and is championing. You cannot back down, she said, warning that leftists use “very dirty tactics, because they want to maintain control.”
“If we don’t step up, they take over. So my plea to everyone else is to understand this is worth fighting for,” she said, also warning people against allowing the left to fool them with their language, using their lies about Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Bill, which critics have smeared as “Don’t Say Gay,” as an example.
There is “no level of low for them,” she said, noting they even accuse her of politicizing education. “As a conservative, I want politics out of education,” she refuted the claim. They will use “intimidation and bullying tactics to shut you down,” she said, explaining that they do not want civil discourse, as that is not part of their playbook.
“That messaging [intimidation tactics without civil discourse] is being pushed down all the way throughout and I think that’s really scary and …. something we’re pushing back on,” she said.
“You’re seeing that playbook across the country,” she said, adding, “Do not let that succeed, because we are on the right side of history.”
She also left a pointed message for politicians, urging them to maintain their backbone, rather than simply pretending to have one when trying to get elected.
Read Breitbart News’s profile on Ziegler, America’s Fight: Conservative School Board Member Blows the Lid off Inner Workings of the Left’s Monopoly on Education, here.