Bridget Ziegler should step down - and let Sarasota County's school district move on
Ziegler is a distraction on School Board
Listening to the public comments at the Dec. 12 Sarasota County School Board meeting, I heard several speakers include references to School Board Member Bridget Ziegler’s acknowledged sexual behavior and also the accusations her husband faces.
Ziegler is not responsible for her husband’s allegedly criminal behavior.
How she behaves behind closed doors is none of our business and, as a couple of people mentioned, we should not “cast the first stone.”
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The real issue is the conflict between her behavior and the barriers she has put into place that have harmed our students. These were her decisions and she is seeing the natural consequences.
She has become and will continue to be a distraction to the educational process in Sarasota County.
Mrs. Ziegler, I ask you to resign in order to bring respect and focus back to our School Board.
Your resignation would put an end to the microscope you and your family (including your children) would be under if you remain on the School Board.
Please, do the right thing for our schools, our community, your children and yourself.
Dr. Carolyn De Zutter, Sarasota
Turnabout is fair play in Ziegler case
The very definition of hypocrisy is the Dec. 8 letter, “Bridget Ziegler has no reason to resign,” in which the author states that the Sarasota County School Board member should be excused because “her private sex life is none of our business.”
Bridget Ziegler?
The woman who has made the private sex lives of people who are gay, transgender or otherwise not part of “her” definition of “normal” everyone’s business?
The woman who would police bathrooms to check if the user is using the bathroom of his or her birth gender?
The woman who wants to ban anything of the most minimal sexual content, including health information, for everyone?
Someone who intrudes into everyone else’s personal life has no right to privacy.
John J. LiMarzi, Sarasota
Culture wars harm students, teachers
Many of us in the Jewish community have become concerned about the overreach of the Sarasota County School Board into issues that were formerly handled responsibly by teachers and administrators.
A group of us are now formally organizing to denounce the political culture wars that have infected local leadership and our School Board. It must end now.
Students, teachers and administrators are suffering under oppression and intolerance.
Our best teachers are fleeing and average SAT scores among Florida students are among the lowest in the country.
Local leaders have banned books, and they have also targeted the librarians whom we rely on to inspire our children to read and think. This is not how we sustain or grow a healthy, diverse community and an economy with good jobs and great tourism.
It’s time to let our students be free to grow. Let our teachers inspire and let our school administrators do their jobs.
Wendy Rosen, Sarasota
Texas abortion law too intrusive
So the law in Texas is that a woman who carries a fetus with a fatal health condition must carry it full term until it dies at birth, even when the life of the mother is threatened, with very few exceptions.
Under this law, a woman with two children who fears for her life must travel to another state to get a medical procedure that should be decided by her and her doctor.
This is an amazingly barbaric and unsafe intrusion of government into a citizen’s life, and it is opposed by a vast majority of Americans.
This law, the ruling of the Texas Supreme Court and the motives of the apparently misnamed Right to Life movement are shameful, wrong and dangerous to any woman in America who becomes pregnant.
Con Nicholas, Sarasota
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Bridget Ziegler has become a distraction on Sarasota's School Board
