 Well, good morning, everyone. It's great to be here today to introduce you to Vermont's next Secretary of Education, Zoe Saunders. And we're happy to have our husband and two kids here with us today as well. I'm sure you all know recruiting new workers and families is a priority for me. So I'm happy to say they'll be relocating from Florida, whereas Zoe currently serves as Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer for Broward County Schools, which is the sixth largest school district in the entire country, serving over 200,000 students. For comparison, we have about 84,000 students here in Vermont across the whole state. Zoe has a strong background in education and brings impressive executive experience. She's a problem solver, leader, and innovator, who has been laser focused on improving outcomes for kids. And that's where our focus needs to be. How can we get the best results for the students we serve? It's no secret. Our education system is at a critical stage. We have big, big challenges. But I also believe we have many opportunities. And I know Zoe will be able to help us navigate both. We're small enough, and I believe minimal enough to have the best education system in the country, from cradle to career, especially for the amount of money we're already investing. Moving forward, it will take all of us, teachers, parents, administrators, school staff, community leaders, and legislators to work together to ensure we reach our full potential. Zoe's fresh approach and perspective and experience working with schools, communities, and all their stakeholders to come up with solutions to challenges and improve outcomes for kids will be incredibly valuable as we do this work together. And I know she's eager to get started and looks forward to engaging with Vermonters across the state to make progress on our shared objectives. Before turning it over to Zoe to introduce herself, I want to take a moment to express my sincere appreciation to Interim Secretary Boucher, who continues to be a trusted and important member of my team, as well as a strong leader at the agency for years. Heather is passionate about the work of AOE, and most importantly, passionate about supporting Vermonters' most valuable asset, our kids. So thank you, Heather. I also want to thank the State Board of Education, including Chair Jennifer Sammelson, who is here today, for their work to recruit and vet candidates for this role. It takes a lot of time and commitment, and you did a great job making sure there were strong candidates for me to choose from. So with all that, it's now my pleasure to turn it over to our next Secretary of Education, Zoe Sonner. Good morning. First, I would like to thank Governor Scott for appointing me to be Vermont's next Secretary of Education. Thank you, Governor, for this incredible opportunity. I am 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 from cradle to career. I have devoted my career to expanding educational opportunities, particularly in underserved communities. I bring diverse leadership experience, encompassing public school governance of the sixth largest school district in the country, and also executive strategy experience focused on driving academic improvement in multiple states. I am a passionate believer in the power of education to uplift and to nurture students in reaching their fullest potential. It is my honor to serve as the Secretary of Education in a state with such a strong tradition and history of prioritizing education and the needs of children. I value community input and will work very hard to understand the local issues and educational priorities so that I may support evidence-based educational strategies that support all Vermonters. On a personal level, I am a mom of two school-aged children. Cue the waving. And I really understand the weight of responsibility of setting education policy. It is really important that we get it right for every child. And over the years, I've spent a lot of time in Vermont visiting both of my sisters and my aunt who live in the state, and we've really come to love Vermont. My husband and I are really excited to move here to Vermont and are really looking forward to raising our children in such a wonderful place. And so with that, I really look forward to working with the superintendents and principals, classroom teachers, students, and parents across the state to navigate some of the challenges that you are facing. I'm ready to listen, learn, and lead as we face some challenging times and really believe in the opportunity to make Vermont the standout as the best educational system in the country and look forward to the opportunity to serving and working with you all. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I'm joined this morning by my fellow board member and member of the Secretary-Search Committee, Lyle Jepsen, and I'm grateful that we can both be with you here today. After we received the Governor's letter requesting that the State Board of Education initiate the search for the next Secretary of Education, the committee met 11 times to execute our duties. Our work included establishing a framework for the search process, developing and advertising the job posting, holding a public comment hearing during which we received and later reviewed more than 100 written and oral comments regarding the preferred qualities and attributes of the next Secretary of Education, drafting interview questions that incorporated this public comment and creating a scoring rubric, reviewing applications, conducting interviews, and finally debriefing with the full board to discuss the candidates. I'm happy to report that we received applications from many highly qualified individuals and in many ways, our selection of three finalists to advance to the Governor for his consideration was not easy. However, the board was unanimous in this decision and I'm delighted to welcome Zoe to this position. As I reflect back on the Governor's letter in which he shared his vision of a transformative educational leader, one who has a demonstrated commitment to ensuring that all students have the skills to succeed in the classroom and beyond, who can build a vibrant and inclusive organizational culture to support the vision of the agency, who provides inspirational leadership and who believes in the power of education as the key to uplifting and revitalizing our communities. I believe that Zoe possesses all of these traits and more. Zoe impressed the board with her extensive experience with the public school system, her skills at collaborating and building consensus among disparate groups, her strategic ability to leverage resources in order to do more with less, and her proven track record in government and educational policy. She is a talented leader who is deeply committed to improving student opportunities and outcomes and we've shared her enthusiasm to serve as our next secretary of education. Welcome Zoe. On behalf of the State Board of Education, we look forward to collaborating with you to deliver high quality educational services in Vermont. Thank you. With that, we'll open up to questions. Well, thank you very much for all coming today. Governor, I think one of the biggest concerns that at least we have heard is just the time that it took to select a candidate to go through this process. Why did it take so long to find a new secretary? Well, obviously, this is a process that should take time. This is an important position. And, you know, to be honest, we were, I felt we were in pretty good hands with Secretary Boucher and so that took some of the pressure off, but as well we had a flood in between, as you might remember, that took our attention away from some of those day-to-day activities. So the good news is we're here today. We've got a great candidate that came forth and I believe we're in good hands today as well. April 15th. As you alluded to, Vermont faces a lot of problems. Number one probably is defining enrollment. It looks like you have some experience navigating school closures. What kind of role do you think the state should take in that process? So, you know, nationally, districts and states across the country are facing very similar challenges of declining enrollment, aging facilities, you know, having to do more with less and supporting children, not only academically but in terms of their mental health. And so in my role, I've been able to work in a lot of different and complex systems in multiple states navigating those very challenges. We can look to other strategies that have been deployed across the country that have been effective as a way to begin the conversation and explore their potential value they could add here in the state of Vermont. But what I have learned throughout my career is that 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, what may be driving the declining enrollment before we can begin to explore some of those strategies. I think the governor has put forward a number of strategies. And I know the legislature is also putting forward another number of ideas that are important to explore. And I'm definitely agree with the governor that there's a lot of opportunity certainly to improve outcomes. And I think that's a big focus and needs to be the North Star with conversations that are also needed around the affordability challenge. The governor has said that Vermont's education funding formula might have reached its end. Can you talk about how Florida funds public education and what Vermont might learn from Florida's education funding formula? Yeah, so Florida, one of the things about Vermont, you're one of the top spenders on education, right? And I think that's a good thing. It shows the investment that you all place on education. In Florida, it's one of the lowest per people reimbursement rates for students. So that does present different challenges as you navigate how to provide the best resources. And I think ultimately these conversations are around how can we be equitable with our funding? And so in my experience currently at Broward County Public Schools, we've come to the recognition that many of our under-enrolled schools are not able to offer the variety of electives and special programs and things like that. And so I think we need to really think about that to make sure that every student and every school in every classroom has opportunity to a broad set of educational experiences and electives. And I think that's part of the conversation when you think about funding is really thinking about how it can support the education and being in alignment with the values and goals of the state. The choice ecosystem. Do you believe that part of the changes that need to maybe come to Vermont include an expansion of choice? So thank you for that question. So before I answer that, I do want to share that I do have a background in charter schools, but I also have an equivalent amount of time spent in advocating for improvements within the traditional public school system. So I come with both perspectives, which I think is really valuable as we explore different opportunities. I think ultimately the purpose of education is to help every child meet their fullest potential. And there's a lot of different, when you look at choice, there's some programs that will really help students thrive or there might be a specialized learning pathway that could be really helpful for students to get a jumpstart in career. And all of those things are important as we think about providing different programming and options while also ensuring that within that overall education ecosystem you have a very strong base of really high quality public education in neighborhood schools to exploring different choice options. So at this point, I mean, I think all these conversations really have to be, these changes don't happen overnight. So I don't want to get ahead of myself in terms of making recommendations on policies. I know that there's a lot of different ideas on the table, but it's really about figuring out what is the right fit. And we need to have further conversations around that and work very collaboratively with the agency of education with our superintendent's 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. Carson being Mack in the Supreme Court decision also has played a really big role here in Vermont and what was your point about the tuition system. What are your thoughts on public dollars going to private or religious schools? So my understanding is that that's been funding private schools as part of a century-long tradition within Vermont of being able to provide educational opportunities and options for every student. I know that the federal government has had some decisions recently and that that has been a topic of conversation. Certainly, the state has to follow the federal laws. And I think the focus that I have seen within Vermont is making sure that all of the options are supportive of children and really focusing on outcomes and making sure that they're following kind of consistent anti-discrimination policies and so forth. In Florida, did your children attend public schools? And will they attend public schools in Vermont? Where is home? Yes. So my children have attended the traditional public school in our neighborhood since kindergarten. And I think the best part of our day, really, for me and my husband is really standing outside and watching them ride their bikes to school and seeing all the neighbors wave to them as they go into their classrooms. They're on cue to wave again. So yes, and our intent is we move to Vermont is for them to also attend public schools. Any other questions for me? The governor? Can I just restate a question? I have. The governor has said in terms of school closures, the state, we need to get involved. We have a long-standing vision of local control in Vermont. A lot of people are talking about whether or not we should keep it. If our Democrats talk about it, the governor talk about it. What do you think of that? Again, I just want to restate what I said, was everything should be on the table. When you consider we have 84,000 kids and we're proposing about $2.4 billion worth of spending, and it doesn't seem to be getting to the kids, we need to start focusing on the kids and working our way back out. So that should be the first mission. The goal is what's best for our kids and then work from there back out. As I have said, and I'll repeat, I think it was Shaft Smith that said this years ago, and everyone wants to save money. Everyone or many people think that we should close down some of our small schools. We just don't want it to be our small schools in our community. So this is a tough, tough subject. In some of the, we talked about what changes Zoe will make. As a reminder, this is my fourth term in office, almost eight years now. We put many proposals on the table initially throughout the years. Haven't, they haven't acted on many, if at all. And so change takes a while. So I wouldn't, I would hope that we wouldn't expect Zoe to come in and magically fix everything. It's gonna take all of us working together in order to do something about the system we have in place today that isn't efficient and it doesn't appear to be effective. Did you have a follow-up question for me on that? What changes do you expect to come by the end of the legislative session? Do you expect changes to come before the end of the legislative session in terms of how we fund the penetration? I would hope that there would be some path forward. This is something that Vermonters are clamoring for. They can't afford a 20% increase, possibly more for some. And we owe it to them to put our heads together to figure this out. We should have some really solid structural changes, I believe, in place that would take effect almost immediately to provide relief. But again, we'll be talking with the legislature about that. Allison? Yeah, we'll go to the phones, Allison. Hi, Allison, I know that from seven days. Florida's a very different state from Vermont, so I'm wondering if you have any plan to kind of get to know the unique educational needs of different communities, a listening tour or something like that to kind of really understand the unique characteristics of every town in Vermont when it comes to educational needs. Before she answers that, I will remind everyone that I think Florida has a number of Vermonters there. As I recall, when I first ran for governor, I was doing some fundraising and I went to Florida because that's where everyone was. And I was surprised at how many people came out for some of the events that I held throughout the state. So we are well-represented in Florida. I know more people interested in moving to Florida, so we're going to help your population, Gold. We hope you spot that. Oh, thank you for the question. That absolutely isn't the intent within the first 90 days I really intend to be out in the community visiting towns, conducting a listening and learning tour to really understand at a local level what do people perceive to be the strengths of the education system? What are some of the opportunities for improvement so that we can work collaboratively? You know, in my experience, I've done a lot of work in different communities. People on the ground really have a pulse on what's working and what's not working. And this is the opportunity to be solution-oriented and have those really important conversations as we explore new ideas and think about what the future of education looks like in Vermont to prepare our students. Thank you. With that, any others? Actually, I have another related question for you, Governor. But say unrelated. Yeah. We're not going to go unrelated today. We'll stay on top of it. We'll give you another opportunity next week. Thank you all very much.