The people who actually built their lives inside classrooms just took the board back.
Beth Mayberry and Megan Tennimon, both former teachers, swept their Sarasota School Board races on Tuesday, defeating conservative challengers and ending a right-wing majority that had controlled the district since 2022. They ran on the issues that matter to anyone who has ever watched a child struggle in an underfunded school: school funding, academic achievement, and directing resources to underserved communities. Not book bans. Not ICE raids on school grounds. Not investigations into how much undocumented children “cost” the district.
They join moderates Liz Barker, a former school counselor, and businessman Tom Edwards on the five-member board. The balance of power has shifted. The culture-war apparatus that turned a 45,000-student district into a national punchline is on its way out.
Let’s name what that apparatus did. Bridget Ziegler, Moms for Liberty co-founder and three-term board member, did not seek re-election this cycle. Her legacy includes voting to oust Superintendent Brennan Asplen for reasons nobody could articulate, which Asplen himself called “politics and nonsense.” She pushed to cooperate with ICE inside schools and to investigate the cost of undocumented students, turning a public school system into an extension of the deportation machine. And then there was the sex scandal involving Ziegler and her husband, who faced a sexual assault allegation and was never charged, a saga that dragged the board’s name through national headlines while students were supposed to be the priority.
This is what happens when ideologues capture a school board. Governance becomes performance. Children become props. Teachers become enemies.
The 2022 sweep that installed this majority was engineered from the top down. Ron DeSantis flew into Sarasota two days before the primary to rally Republicans behind the “ZEM” slate, Ziegler, Enos, and Marinelli. Republicans outvoted Democrats three to one. The conservative candidates won despite being out-fundraised in every single race. Money didn’t decide it. Organized turnout did.
Now the same mechanism just ran in reverse. Community organizing, teacher solidarity, and a clear message about what schools are actually for carried two educators to victory. The Sarasota County Democratic Party endorsed the winning candidates. The people who showed up this time were the ones tired of watching their school board chase headlines instead of serving kids.
But the work is not finished. A third seat remains undecided. Jimmy Glover, a candidate from Newtown, won 44% of the vote but fell short of the 50% needed to avoid a runoff. He faces Heidi Brandt, a Republican who took 32%. Teresa DeWitt, a Moms for Liberty activist, finished with 25% and is eliminated. Every vote that went to DeWitt was a vote for the same agenda the community just rejected. Those voters will not stay home in the runoff. Neither can we.
Glover ran on representing a community that has been historically underserved by this district. Newtown deserves a seat at the table. The runoff is the next front in this fight, and it will require the same door-knocking, phone-banking, and neighbor-to-neighbor organizing that flipped the other two seats.
What happened in Sarasota is a blueprint, not a victory lap. A school board is the closest level of government to a child’s daily life. The people who sit on it decide what gets funded, who gets supported, and whether a classroom is a sanctuary or a staging ground for political stunts. Conservatives understood that when they took this board in 2022. Progressives just proved they understand it now.
The runoff is coming. Show up like the classroom depends on it, because it does.