WINTER PARK, Fla. | Openly gay Lake Howell High School English teacher Bobby Agagnina is running for Seminole County School Board District 4.
Agagnina, who was born and raised in Central Florida, has been teaching at Lake Howell for nine years. After graduating from the University of North Florida with a Bachelor’s Degree of English, Agagnina knew he wanted to teach where he grew up.
“I love it here. I love the subject and I love working with my students,” says Agagnina.
Agagnina started getting more involved when he noticed a lack in leadership’s focus despite the fact that all policies were created with a “student-first” ideal. “[The school board] says, ‘Students first. Students are the priority,’ but then every policy they rolled out didn’t support that,” he says. “So I decided to join the teacher’s union, I became the school representative. My thought was, ‘I think we can make some change here at the school level.’”
Now Agagnina looks to take that initiative to the school board where he can implement change in the school system by “being on the front lines.”
Agagnina says the main reason he entered the race was due to the enthusiasm from his students who encouraged him to run.
“It was my students who asked, ‘Mr. A., why aren’t you there? You need to run,’” says Agagnina. When he pressed them as to why they felt he should run the overwhelming reason was he would “do the right thing” for all students.
“They told me ‘you know what works, you’ll stop the crazy and help us and advocate for us,’” he says. Agagnina is the only current teacher running for District 4, something he thinks gives him the advantage.
Agagnina is against arming teachers in schools, supports increasing accessibility to wrap-around mental health services for students, wants to encourage other forms of student success like vocational school training and is an advocate for ending high stakes testing. He also wants to negotiate a living wage and affordable living for all school employees.
Agagnina doesn’t think being gay will have any negative impact on his race as he has always been open and out to his students, despite Seminole County not having any anti-discrimination policies in place to protect him.
“Right from day one I have a PowerPoint I give to all my students,” Agagnina explains. “In it I say, ‘I’m Mr. Agagnina. Here are my credentials to teach this class, here’s how you say my name and here is a picture of my partner and I with our dog Milo. I’m gay. We’re moving on.’”
Agagnina continued, “I’ve had so many former students come back and tell me, ‘Thank you Mr. A. for being out because I wasn’t,’ or they say ‘I’ve never met a gay person but now I know you.’”
Image from Agagnina’s Facebook page.
