Bart Birdsall has been endorsed by Equality Florida and by Watermark, Florida's Distinctive Gay & Lesbian Newspaper.

Hello! I am Bart Birdsall, and I am running for School Board, District 2. I have been a teacher and a media specialist in the school district the last 9 years. I am a 21st-century person with 21st-century goals, thoughts, ideas, and visions. It is time for a change. I promise to bring the fresh breath of change to the school system.

I will work to achieve these goals:

1. raise teacher morale including pay and working conditions;
2. improve student achievement by improving school climate;
3. hold school district officials accountable.

Some of my goals include upgrading technology to include online grades available to parents 24 hours a day, anti-bullying trainings for students and teachers, researching how to get affordable housing for teachers, contracting with food vendors who provide creative, healthy choices for our children, integrating 21st-century popular exercise routines like yoga and Pilates into the P.E. curriculum, and encouraging district officials and teachers to lose weight and quit smoking to provide good examples to students. I believe a healthy mind and a healthy body go hand in hand. Health and exercise are top priorities for me personally, and I hope to help others get healthy. I also believe a safe environment at school is very important. Safety, health, education, and dignity for all is my vision.

The 12-year incumbent has this record:

• given herself a raise to the level of a veteran teacher with 3 master's degrees;
• refused to give teachers a raise out of available monies;
• ignored teacher pay despite Florida's being ranked 31st in the nation acording to the National Education Association Ranking, 2003-2004;
• ignored bullying of at-risk GLBT children;
• colluded in trumped-up professional standards charges against teachers;
• allowed a cruel, unaccountable professional standards director to mistreat teachers for minor or trumped up charges;
• changed the superintendent requirement of a Ph.D. to a Master's degree so that the in-house candidate could get the job against better-qualified candidates despite the inhouse candidate’s for superintendent's background of presiding over the real-estate scam;
• doesn't answer taxpayer emails but treats them as spam.

Personal information:

Bart has been honored as one of Library Journal's Movers and Shakers of 2006. He has published two articles: a Pilates article in PilatesStyle magazine, a national magazine on newsstands and a chapter in the book One Teacher in 10 (second edition) edited by Kevin Jennings. He has devoted much of his free time to helping GLBT youth. He is also a certified Pilates teacher and does Pilates and yoga daily.

He holds a Master's in German Languages and Literature, a Master's in Education, and a Master's degree in Library and Information Science.

He credits his supportive parents for his personality. His father gave him an analytical and investigative mind, and his Japanese mother gave him a spirited and intuitive outlook on life.

His loves are Pilates, yoga, Italian bel canto opera (Bellini, Donizetti, and Rossini) as well as Verdi, film noir, passionflowers, reading, and writing. Everything he does is done with passion.