- November 22, 2024
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Updated 8:01 a.m. Nov. 11
Wearing his Vans shoes, skinny gray pants and a polo shirt, Bobby Bossardet might be mistaken for a student at Buddy Taylor Middle School if it weren’t for the walkie talkie on his hip — and his full, neatly trimmed beard.
Bossardet, who was hired in 2018 as the sixth principal in seven years at Buddy Taylor, strides the halls, talking to every student he sees. Smiling, waving, fist bumping.
“Hey, girl!” he says in his raspy voice to one student. “How are your grades? You getting A’s?”
She thinks for a moment and says, “B’s and C’s.”
He cocks his head to one side. “You getting A’s?” he says again, both serious and not serious.
Bossardet isn’t the only adult putting out this friendly-mentor vibe: All adults — from janitors to teachers to administration — are expected to be in the hallways during transitions between classes. It shows the students that adults care about them; it’s also harder to start a fight when a teacher is chatting you up.
Now, he said, data suggests Buddy Taylor is poised to leap from being a weak-link C school to an A, matching the best schools in the district.
Discipline has improved, with 81% of Buddy Taylor students receiving zero referrals in 2019-2020 (up from 70% in 2018-2019). The number of referrals went down 38% in that same time frame, and out of school suspension days went down 48%. Attendance was up to 94.6% before the pandemic.
Bossardet's work has been rewarded: He was recently hired at the district level and is now Flagler Schools’ executive director of leadership development. His first day was Nov. 9. His former assistant, Cara Cronk, was hired as the new principal of Buddy Taylor.
It took some time before Bossardet realized that leadership in schools was all about relationships with students.
He attended Flagler Palm Coast High School, and his wrestling coach at the time, Steve DeAugustino, remembers him as being almost obsessed with winning a title.
“He was a great person to coach,” said DeAugustino, now the athletics director at FPC. “He would do not only everything you asked him, but I remember days when he would show up and go out to a field and flip tires, by himself, chop wood to build his strength.”
Bossardet did win an individual state championship as a senior. (“I finished second my junior year, but I don’t like talking about it,” he said.)
After FPC, Bossardet wrestled at Carson-Newman University, in Tennessee, and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in human exceptionalities in 2003. He earned his master's degree in educational leadership from Nova Southeastern University in 2007.
He returned to Flagler Schools when he was hired to teach kids with behavioral struggles; he also became an assistant coach to DeAugustino. When he eventually took over as head coach of the wrestling team, he pushed the players hard. He expected state championships.
Bossardet recalled that after a trip out of state with one of his early teams, some players quit. It was a wakeup call to him that something needed to change.
“I think he learned pretty quick that not everybody was as motivated as he was,” DeAugustino said.
He spoke to another coach at FPC, Dave Halliday, a legend in track and field in Florida, and told him how much he admired Halliday’s hall-of-fame career.
Halliday replied that although the honors were nice, the greatest honor was that 15 of his former athletes had asked him to be in their wedding parties. The state championships didn’t matter at all compared with the role he’d had in students’ lives.
Bossardet began to think of other ways to measure success. “I started focusing on individuals, instead of having the same expectations for everyone,” he said. “I realized being a wrestling coach wasn’t about wins. It was about talking to the kid who was going through a divorce or a breakup.”
But coaching remained part of his identity as a leader.
Showing students that he cared about them as people was one important lesson. Another was to help them believe that they could achieve great things.
Several years ago Bossardet helped set up a service-learning program for FPC students, modeled after the Princess Place Legacy program created by one of his many mentors, Francis Royals. Bossardet's students set up tours for elementary school kids, teaching them science at the beach in an eco tour.
The first tour was for Kenneth DeFord’s class at Bunnell Elementary School. Afterward, Bossardet recalled, DeFord thanked the high school tour guides. “I want to let you know the impact you made on their lives today,” he said. “We had four kids who attended that had never seen the beach until today.”
“That was powerful for my students to hear,” Bossardet recalled. “I’ll never forget him making that speech.”
Later, as a dean at FPC, Bossardet saw more of the power of positivity. He and the other deans at the time, Ryan Andrews (now an assistant principal at Indian Trails Middle School) and Tousiant Roberson (now an AP at FPC), dealt with disciplinary issues every day, and then one day Bossardet decided to call home about a student — just because. The parent answered the phone with a groan, as in, “What did she do now?” But Bossardet reassured the parent, saying that on the contrary, the student was doing great. He encouraged the parent to do something nice for the student that weekend, to celebrate.
Making the call felt good. It was like they had invented a new approach to discipline.
Bossardet, Andrews and Roberson got excited about the results, and they started making 10 calls each Friday.
“Positive phone calls take 20 seconds,” he said. But they changed how some students thought about themselves for a long time afterward.
When Bossardet was hired as principal at Buddy Taylor Middle School, he tried to use the best of his experiences as a coach, a teacher, a dean. He wanted to make Buddy Taylor a positive brand. He saw the culture change as three-pronged process: Help the students have high expectations for themselves, hold them accountable, and provide every ounce of support they would need to succeed.
To start, he had the district develop a grade-point-average calculator so that each Buddy Taylor student could easily assess how they were doing in real time, rather than waiting till the end of a semester and possibly being surprised by a failing grade. Rather than intimidate struggling students, the increased attention to their grades helped them to see where they needed to improve when they still had time to adjust; it gave them a goal. When Bossardet met with students, he would always check their GPA with them.
Attendance was poor at Buddy Taylor, so he and his staff brainstormed ways to improve. They came up with Fresh Fridays, where students were encouraged to dress up in a shirt and tie or a dress. If they did so, they earned a chance to win a new pair of Vans shoes.
And the kids bought in.
“We would have 250 kids in shirts and ties,” he said. “It looked like we were about to have a dance.”
Attendance improved. Discipline problems decreased.
"You create an environment where kids want to be here," he said.
Bossardet consulted with every staff member and valued their input, from office staff to head custodian Ron Crowley. "That man is one of the best human beings I’ve ever met," Bossardet said. "He’s mentored more kids in Flagler County from being the custodian at BTMS for so long — he’s the eyes and ears, he knows who's coming in hungry. He knows which teachers are coming in early, staying late. I lean on him for advice on everything."
Bossardet also brought in a former FPC student, Enosch Henry, who, with his friend Chris Bitalien had created a clothing line called Rise to Greatness that had become popular while Bossardet was a dean at FPC. (“Technically it wasn’t in dress code, but he let it slide,” Henry recalled.)
Bossardet saw FPC students wearing the positive messages with pride, and Bossardet wanted to replicate that effect at Buddy Taylor. When Henry visited the school, he also saw a familiar face again: Michelle Coolican, his former middle school teacher.
With Bossardet’s encouragement, Henry was invited into her classroom, where he inspired the students. “The way life is, you can make it anything you want to be,” Henry recalled saying, “you’ve just got to put the work in.”
Henry’s visit to her classroom was memorable for Coolican not only because the students were excited to meet a young entrepreneur who looked like them, but also because it showed Bossardet’s gift for inclusion — and for developing relationships with everybody.
“He connects with those kids on a different level,” Coolican said of Bossardet. “He connects with every kid.”
Now that Bossardet is in the district office he plans to encourage mentorship not only of students but of fellow teachers and staff. He believes in drawing on the talents of every adult to take an active role in the lives of students.
Coolican said his approach is “empowering.”
"You create an environment where kids want to be here."
BOBBY BOSSARDET
When she first met Bossardet, he encouraged her to pursue her own innovative ideas, including bringing hands-on learning projects to students, including a trip to the University of Florida.
“He treats you like a professional,” she said. “He inspires you but also allows you to do your own thing. He supports innovative things and creativity, as long as it’s best for the kids.”
Coolican wrote grant proposals and fulfilled her vision for the class that year, exposing some kids to a museum for the first time in their lives. Bossardet was impressed. He told her, “This is something special. Document this.”
She did so, and she was recognized as the Flagler Schools Teacher of the Year in January 2020.
“I’ve been at Buddy Taylor for 15 years,” she said. “I feel like I’m a good teacher, a veteran teacher. But he empowers you to be that level better. So I don’t think I would have accomplished the goals I did in the last year without that push and support.”
Stacia Collier, a Buddy Taylor assistant principal whom Bossardet called "brilliant," said Bossardet’s coach-like approach — encouraging everyone to set and reach their own goals — made him a remarkable principal. Some leaders try to give you a goal; he let you set your own, and that made everyone more motivated to achieve them.
“I’m sad he’s leaving, but he’s helped so many people on this campus realize that they’re a leader, too,” she said. She added: "Bobby Bossardet is a world-class leader and brings a fresh lens to the district office."
Coolican believes Bossardet will continue to help Flagler Schools thrive.
“He’ll be missed,” Coolican said. “But the great part is, all his fantastic ideas and support and passion for students and teaching — he’s now able to do that at a large-scale model. So if he can bring what he did at Buddy Taylor to the Flagler school district — we’re already an A — we’re going to knock it out of the park.”
“He’s not just a boss,” she added. “He’s a leader.”
