Updated at 4:42 p.m.

Zoie Saunders, a public school administrator from Florida, has been tapped as Vermont's next secretary of education, Gov. Phil Scott said on Friday. The appointment comes nearly a year after Dan French left the position.

At a press conference on Friday, Scott said Saunders, a mother of two school-age children, was "a problem solver, leader and innovator who has been laser-focused on improving outcomes for kids."

"Zoie's fresh approach and perspective and experience working with schools, communities and all their stakeholders ... will be incredibly valuable" as the state works to improve schools, he said.

Saunders, a 2005 Harvard University graduate with a master's degree in education from Vanderbilt University, will begin on April 15. Interim education secretary Heather Bouchey will stay on as a deputy, Scott's office said.

Saunders currently serves as the chief strategy and innovation officer for Broward County Public Schools, the sixth-largest school district in the country with more than 200,000 students. She has held that position for less than three months, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Before that, Saunders spent five years as chief education officer in her hometown of Fort Lauderdale. She also served for almost seven years as an administrator for Charter Schools USA, a for-profit education management organization that runs 87 schools in seven states, including 61 in Florida.

Vermont does not have any charter schools, but the model has come under fire in other states for siphoning money out of the public school system.

For the past 11 months, Bouchey has served as interim secretary of education. During that time, school leaders and legislators have spoken candidly about the lack of leadership, vision and expertise within the Agency of Education and the lengthy search process for a new education leader.

Schools in Vermont are at a major inflection point, with aging school buildings in need of billions of dollars of repair, soaring education costs and a complex funding system that many feel is irrevocably broken.

In remarks on Friday, Saunders said her goal was to make Vermont "a national model — producing the best educational outcomes in the United States, from cradle to career."

She said she would work hard to understand "the local issues and educational priorities" in the state. To that end, she said she would begin her tenure with a 90-day "listening and learning tour" of Vermont's towns to understand what community members see as the strengths and challenges of the current system.
Asked what role the state should take in closing schools amid a shrinking student population, Saunders said "community context really matters, and these are conversations that really need to take place in coordination with all the stakeholders across the state and within local towns to really understand what are the challenges of what may be driving the declining enrollment."

Improving outcomes for students "needs to be the north star" for conversations around the the education system's affordability issues, Saunders added.


Pressed on whether she thinks families should have more choice when it comes to sending their children to independent schools in light of her charter school background, Saunders noted her experience "advocating for improvements within the traditional public school system."
"Ultimately, the purpose of education is to help every child meet their fullest potential," she said. "It's really about figuring out what is the right fit, and we need to ... work very collaboratively with the Agency of Education, with our superintendents, principals, classroom teachers and parents, to identify what solutions are really going to help drive things forward and advance the goals of the education system."