Vermont Board of Education Launches Search for New Top Education Official

Dan French Credit: File: Jeb Wallace-Brodeur

The State Board of Education has launched a search for Vermont’s next top education official, almost five months after former Vermont education secretary Dan French announced that he was stepping down. At its monthly meeting on Wednesday, the eight voting members of the board agreed to establish a search committee made up of chair Jennifer Samuelson and board members Lyle Jepson and Jenna O’Farrell. That committee will select a pool of candidates to put forward to the full board, which will then, as specified in statute, recommend at least three candidates to Gov. Phil Scott.
French left the job in early May to become chief operating officer of the nonprofit Council of Chief State School Officers. Deputy education secretary Heather Bouchey has been serving as interim secretary.
Don Tinney, president of the Vermont-National Education Association, said in an interview on Monday that he was surprised at how long it took to begin a search. But the process couldn’t start until Scott initiated it. The governor finally did on July 26, by writing a letter to the board. Scott outlined what he was looking for in a new secretary of education.

The person must be able to manage “growing social and human services pressures” and the declining number of school-age Vermonters, Scott wrote. According to the Agency of Education’s data dashboard, Vermont’s public schools lost roughly 11,500 students between 2005 and 2022. Scott wants the next secretary to increase enrollment in career and technical education and to address educational inequality. The board should prioritize applicants who have experience managing complex issues, Scott wrote, though those issues do not need to be “exclusive to education.”

Tinney, the teacher’s union president, said the next secretary should be “an experienced educator who knows how the system works.” The person should also be ready to address staffing shortages at the Agency of Education, Tinney said. The agency is currently hiring for several key positions, including director of special education and director of data management and analysis.

Tinney said the increased flow of public money to private schools is a drain on the public education system and an issue the incoming secretary should prioritize.

The new secretary should be “a real champion for public education,” Tinney said. “[We] need someone who can stand up to privatizers and make sure that our public schools have the resources they need.”

For decades, the State Board of Education appointed the secretary of education. But in 2012, at the behest of then-governor Peter Shumlin, the legislature passed Act 98, which transferred the authority to the governor.
Scott said in his letter that he will be prioritizing flood recovery work as fall begins, and he suggested that the board take eight weeks to conduct its search. Some members expressed skepticism on Wednesday that would be sufficient to perform a robust search.

“That certainly raised my eyebrows,” Samuelson said. She assured fellow board members that the governor’s office has told her that the timeline is not set in stone.