Saunders made education secretary despite Senate rejection

Citing his “constitutional authority to fill vacancies,” Scott named Saunders interim secretary of education in a rebuke to the majority in the Senate, which he accused in a statement of not knowing the difference “between the partisan way and the Vermont way.”

Since her announcement as Scott’s pick to fill the position left vacant by the departure of secretary Dan French, Saunders’ career has been the focus of intense scrutiny. She was chief education officer for Charter Schools USA, which operates private schools partly financed by public money, including in Florida, where Saunders previously lived.

Educators raised concern over her lack of experience in public education, and many lawmakers who ultimately voted against Saunders said she lacked understanding of Vermont’s education system and a vision for its future at a time when rising costs and recent changes in education policy have made it increasingly expensive.

Scott ran an aggressive campaign against Saunders’ critics, putting out early messaging pushing back against concerns about her experience and even putting out testimony from a group of women who all serve as members of his cabinet. He also attempted a last-minute delay when it became clear a majority of senators would vote against her, according to VTDigger.

After announcing her appointment as interim secretary, Scott also released Saunders’ “100 Day Plan,” which the Agency of Education plans to implement. The plan includes holding public forums and tackling the most “immediate challenges” facing Vermont schools, but it offered few specifics.

For Westman, who represents all of Lamoille County but Stowe, his decision to walkout on the vote entirely — a first in his 13 years in the Senate and a remarkable moment in his 40-year career as a lawmaker — was sort of a protest against a process that he said was poisoned well-before the confirmation hearing, leaving him unable to vote for or against her.

“The whole thing feels like national politics coming to Vermont,” Westman said.

Westman said he agreed with the comments made on the floor by Sen. Ann Cummings, D-Montpelier, who represents Stowe. Cummings said her “no” vote on Saunders’ nomination was the first time she had felt bad about casting a vote in her decades-long tenure in the Senate.

Cummings said she had “never experienced such an intense lobbying effort around an issue” as she had around Saunders’ nomination,” and could not in good conscious vote for her. She also lamented that the discourse around her nomination proved that Vermonters were no better than residents of other states after they attacked Saunders for being a former Floridian.

“I don’t see how any of this — the debate, how it was formed or any of it — how we’re any better off,” Westman said. “I don’t see winners on either side of this.”

Speaking out

One of the many critics who spoke out against Saunders’ nomination testified to the House Committee on Education last week regarding problems she believes have arisen since authority over the Agency of Education was consolidated in the office of the governor. She also accused Scott of working against public education in Vermont in favor of a more privatized system.

Krista Huling — former chair of the Board of Education, South Burlington educator and Cambridge resident — was asked to speak to the committee last week about Act 98, a 2012 law passed under Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin that moved the Secretary of Education appointment away from the state board to the governor’s office.

Huling claimed the decision essentially stripped any major decision-making ability and agency from the board.

She claimed the board was under-resourced under both Scott and Shumlin, who appointed Huling to the board, she said in her testimony, but accused Scott specifically of pressuring the board to bring him potential secretary candidates with “CEO experience over education.”

She said she refused to comply with this pressure and even refused a request by a representative of the governor to submit someone to the candidate pool during the nomination process when French was chosen.

“The candidate that had us all most excited to lead the agency was not considered,” Huling said of French’s appointment process. “Instead, our number three choice was given the position. I am convinced that the education landscape would be very different if a different choice had been made in 2018.”

Huling told the newspaper that current board members have told her Saunders was also the weakest of the candidates during this most recent process. Current chair Jennifer Samuelson previously declined to discuss the nomination process.

Huling closed her testimony with the incendiary accusation that Scott wants the public education system in Vermont to collapse, claiming the law that turned education secretary appointments over to the governor’s office has over-politicized education in Vermont.

“His only strategy has been to level-fund public schools and work to dismantle our public education system from the outside in,” Huling said. “Behind closed doors, his office advocates for turning our school system into a voucher system. His administration works to protect the interests of the private school lobby.”

Scott spokesperson Jason Maulucci responded to Huling’s statements by providing documents excerpting many of Scott’s public comments around education and stated that Scott was “ deeply committed to public education in Vermont,” has advocated for “substantial public investments,” and referred to Huling as someone who was “hesitant to make any changes to the status quo” when the system wasn’t “getting the results we need for the investments we’re making.”

A controversial political actor at the state and municipal level, Huling tenure on the board of education included the deciding vote that forced the merger between Stowe and the Morristown-Elmore school district, which was undone just a few years later.

Huling stepped down from the board in 2019 to work on the gubernatorial campaign of former education secretary Rebecca Holcombe. She had played in a role in selecting Holcombe as education secretary under Shumlin, and members of the board of education expressed concern about her role being perceived as a conflict of interest.

Prior to her testimony, she had most recently been active in a 2021 campaign to reform Cambridge’s Varnum Memorial Library that saw the entirety of its staff resign in protest, but which ultimately resulted in increased funding and stabilization of the library.

Huling said she felt she had to “speak her truth” to the House after seeing Saunders, another less qualified candidate for education secretary being pushed by the governor, while she continues to work in a school district where colleagues face layoffs and two proposed budgets have failed.

“We’ve had the governor in office for quite a while now, and we still have a lot of talking points, but we don’t have a roadmap on how to improve public education, and that lack of leadership, I think, is the problem,” Huling said.