BY DAN HILDEBRAN
The new president of the Starke Rotary Club said the civic organization allows him to participate in a wide range of charitable projects, from the global eradication of polio to building pickleball courts at a Starke city park.
In July, Brad Bishop took the club’s gavel from outgoing president Matt Dyal.
Bishop recalled that when Sheriff Gordon Smith invited him to join the civic group in 2020, he was already on the Chamber of Commerce board and was looking to expand his contacts in Bradford County.
“The superintendent and assistant superintendent encouraged me to join,” Bishop recalled, “and it was just a good way to build those networks to promote career and technical education.”
Sports, banking, education
After graduating from Bradford High School with a Gold Seal Vocational Scholarship in 1996, Bishop played basketball for Santa Fe College before transferring to Columbus State University in Georgia, where he played Division II golf.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in business.
While in college, Bishop worked as a bank teller and stayed in banking after graduation, working his way up through several banks to vice president of credit administration.
When the 2008 housing crisis hit, he was working for a real estate investment bank and found himself unemployed when the real estate market crashed.
“I left with a nice severance package, but it didn’t last very long,” Bishop recalled, “so I was looking for an opportunity to find work, and the niche job that I had in the banking world was just no longer around.”
Bishop saw an opening at the technical college, and the hiring officer at that time was Randy Starling, Bishop’s accounting teacher in high school.
“He hired me as a career specialist, and then I grew in that role and into a behavioral resource teacher, basically a dean,” Bishop said.
He then returned to school to earn his master’s degree and was eventually promoted to a coordinator’s job.
“And when the director before me— the previous director— left,” he added, “I interviewed for the job and was hired on as director.”
Finding teachers is difficult
In his 16th year at the college, Bishop said one challenge he and his colleagues face is the growing mandates from Tallahassee educators must follow.
“There have been more and more rules and regulations added,” he said, “but it seems as though nothing is ever replaced. It’s just added.”
Finding instructors who can make more money working in their fields than teaching the field is another constant struggle.
“My current truck driving teachers,” he said. “With their experience, if they wanted to go and drive, they could make way more money on the road, then I can pay them to teach. So, you have to find the person at a point in their life where that’s what they want to do, whether they have a passion for it or don’t want to be over the road.”
The director added that his school is not alone in looking for teachers.
“I was at a meeting over the summer where another person in pretty much my position commented in the conference that they had seven programs currently on hold because they simply could not find the instructor with the right credentials to teach,” Bishop said. “And when they found that person with the right credentials, they were making or having opportunities to make much more money in the private sector.”
Continuing partnership with city
With the completion of the pickleball courts, Bishop said his club hopes to continue working with the City of Starke.
“They have some plans for some park upgrades,” he said. “So, we’re trying to maintain that partnership with them, utilizing not only Rotary Foundation and Rotary grant opportunities but also opportunities that the city may seek through Rotary, like Clay Electric’s Operation Roundup grants.”
The new president added that the club also donates cash to other local causes.
“We make a lot of $500, $1,000, $2,500 donations to local charities,” he said: “Shop With a Cop, ACORN Clinic, Boy Scouts, lots of different groups.”
Diverse membership, cooperation
Bishop said his primary goals are to grow the club’s membership and find and fund local community needs.
“We’ve just recently inducted three new members,” he said, “but we also want to look at the opportunity to increase a more diverse membership. When you look at the age range of our group, and you look at the different demographics of our group, I’m looking to expand our membership into more subcultures.”
Besides Rotary and the chamber, Bishop also represents the college at other community meetings like Kiwanis and Altrusa. He also serves on advisory committees with the Florida Department of Education and other groups, mainly focusing on workforce development funding.
Bishop said community groups like his should always seize opportunities to change and adapt to the community’s needs, even reinventing themselves if that is what’s needed.
He also said he would like more cooperation between the area’s nonprofits to increase their impact in the county.
He added that the Lake Butler Rotary Club has a successful project that honors veterans with crosses and flags along State Road 121. His club wanted to bring the idea to Starke and, while looking into the possibility, discovered that other Bradford County groups had the same idea.
“I brought up the flag idea at a different group’s meeting,” Bishop remembered, “and they’re like: ‘Oh yeah, we’re looking into that too.’ I was like, ‘Okay, well, let’s take the research that we’ve done, and the research that you’ve done, and see how we might be able to partner in this together so that it’s not a competitive thing. It could be for the good of the entire community.”
