Vermont’s New Secretary Of Education Is About To Take Office Surrounded By Controversy

It has been a year since Vermonth’s education secretary Dan French resigned to take a post with the Council of Chief State School Officers (perhaps best known as one of the groups that helped push the Common Core). The search to replace him struck many observers as both slow to launch, then “rushed and halfhearted.”

Governor Phil Scott did not instruct the state education board to search for a replacement until the end of July. He expressed a desire to have someone in place by January, but his pick is set to take office on April 15, and she moves into the position followed by controversy.

Zoie Saunders has barely any background in public education. She attended the Dana Hall School, a private girls school in Wellesley, MA. Her first jobs were in the pediatric health care field, then she went to work in strategy for Charter Schools USA, a charter chain that operates in Florida as a for-profit business, in particular profiting from taxpayer-funded real estate business. CSUSA was founded by Jonathan Hage, a former Green Beret who previously worked for the Heritage Foundation and Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Florida’s Future.

After six and a half years with CSUSA, Saunders moved into the job of Chief Education Officer for the city of Fort Lauderdale, a job that involved expanding education opportunities, including non-public schools.

Saunders took her first job in public education, chief strategy and innovation officer got Broward County Public Schools, in January 2024; her job there was the head up the district’s work to “close and repurpose schools,” a source of controversy in the community.

Saunders does have ties to Vermont; a sister and aunt live there. Otherwise, it’s not clear how she was connected to this job. Governor Scott’s office, which did not respond to a request for comment for this article, has said that Saunders will not be doing any more interviews until she’s in office.

Once Scott announced his hiring choice (on a Friday), pushback was swift and strong. One critic noted that the lack of qualifications for the job was not the bad part:

The bad part is that her experience as a school killer and her years in the charter school industry are in perfect alignment with the governor’s clear education agenda: spread the money around, tighten the screws on public education, watch performance indicators fall, claim that the public schools are failing, spread the money around some more, lather, rinse, repeat. Saunders may not qualify as an educational leader, but her experience is directly relevant to Scott’s policy.

Similar complaints spread; within a week, Scott released a statement that he was “disappointed” with these reactions and those “spreading or believing misinformation.” Saunders, he said, is a “smart, capable woman” who is being “demonized because of the state she is currently living in.” He did not respond to questions about her actual qualifications, or her work history in promoting charters and closing public schools.

Five members of Scott’s senate and senior staff released an op-ed saying “We’re Moms” and “We helped select Zoie Sanders.” It strikes many of the same notes. Her qualifications are that she’s a “doer” who “listens to others” and really cares about children and communities. People shouldn’t jump to conclusions about her. This op-ed, like the governor’s comments, does not address the fear that Saunders is coming to help shift resources away from public schools.

“I’m energized and motivated by the governor’s bold vision to make the state of Vermont a national model, producing the best educational outcomes in the United States,” Saunders said at a press conference on the day of the announcement, leaving people to wonder exactly what that bold vision might entail.

Vermont is one of the few states in the nation that does not allow charter schools. EdChoice, the school choice advocacy group, counts Scott as a supporter of school choice. Vermont does have a voucher program; like Maine, it allows students in small towns without schools to select other schools, including some private schools. Like Maine, it is seeing challenges to the laws saying that such vouchers may not be used for religious private schools, thereby opening the door to sending taxpayer dollars to religious schools.

All of that makes Vermont an appealing target for school choice policy advocates. That may explain why some folks on the ground in Vermont are wondering if Scott and Saunders just found each other, or if some choice-loving matchmaker was involved. Scott says that such speculation is unfair and unfounded. Starting next week, Saunders gets to make the case for herself.