Funeral services for Ed Vetter, the founding principal of Bartow International Baccalaureate School, will be June 28 at 3 p.m. at First United Methodist Church on Lake Morton in Lakeland.
Vetter, a longtime Polk County school administrator who established the county’s first International Baccalaureate School, died May 14, 2025, at Good Shepherd Hospice following a battle with cancer and Parkinson’s Disease.
He was 79.
Vetter distinguished himself as a passionate science teacher at Kathleen Senior High School beginning in 1969. He was the Polk County Teacher of the Year in 1980 and was moved to a position in the district office in 1989. In 1995, Vetter established the International Baccalaureate School at Bartow High School, an academically rigorous program for some of the county’s most gifted students.
Under his leadership, the school was consistently named the top-performing high school in Florida and one of the best schools in the United States. IB Bartow’s FCAT scores were often the highest in the state under Vetter. In 2007, U.S. News & World Report named it third on its list of “America’s Best High Schools” out of 18,700 schools. It was ranked the number two public high school in the U.S. by Newsweek magazine in 2013.
Vetter’s ashes will be scattered in the Gulf during a private ceremony this summer.
The family asks that in lieu of flowers, contributions be made in his name to the Polk Education Foundation for student scholarships.
This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Funeral for Ed Vetter, founding principal of Bartow IB, is June 28
Reporting by Lakeland Ledger / The Ledger
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