Two new appointees took their seats on the State Board of Education on Wednesday, cementing Gov. Phil Scott’s legacy on the 11-member body.
Tom Lovett and Lyle Jepson replaced Bill Mathis and Peter Peltz, appointees of former Gov. Peter Shumlin; their terms expired in February, and members cannot be reappointed after serving a full term.
With their appointments, which are subject to Senate confirmation — a typically pro-forma process — the Republican governor, who was elected to his third term in November, will have picked every person on the board.
There are eight regular members on the board who serve staggered six-year terms, plus two student members (only one of whom votes at a time) who each serve two-year terms. The secretary of the Agency of Education also sits on the board, but does not vote.
Both new appointees have decades of experience in education, though Jepson’s has been in public schools and Lovett’s with independent schools.
“It’s always an asset to have practitioners among us,” said John Carroll, who was re-elected chair of the board on Wednesday. Kim Gleason, a longtime school board member from Essex who was appointed to the state board in 2019, challenged Carroll for the chair’s role, but lost 6-3.
Jepson, currently executive director of the Chamber & Economic Development of the Rutland Region, was once the longtime head of the Stafford Technical Center, and before that was the principal at Fair Haven Union High.
Lovett stepped down from St. Johnsbury Academy in 2020, where he was hired as an English teacher in the 1980s and eventually became headmaster, a post he held for two decades.
Scott’s prior appointments include Kathy Lavoie, a program manager for the Franklin Grand Isle Restorative Justice Center and a former Republican lawmaker, and Jennifer Samuelson, an attorney and school board member in Winhall. Jenna O’Farrell, a nonprofit director in the Northeast Kingdom and former principal at St. Johnsbury School, took her seat at the same time as Gleason.
The state board holds an awkward place in Vermont’s education landscape, particularly after legislative reforms that took away its power to pick the state’s secretary of education. But it still has considerable influence, particularly writing the rules and regulations that fill in the blanks after legislation is passed.
Five years ago, the state board took an aggressive stance on private schools, attempting to write much stricter regulations governing financial oversight and admission practices. Vermont has one of oldest and most extensive voucher systems in the country, and the board’s moves were politically explosive. The board was first blocked by Shumlin; lawmakers later wrote a compromise into law.
One of the state board’s chief antagonists during the private school debates was Oliver Olsen. And Scott made waves in 2018 when he appointed the former independent state legislator and a former Burr and Burton Academy trustee to the board he once tangled with.
The board has once again reopened consideration of private school rules, in large part because they must adopt regulations around Act 173, a massive special education overhaul that also involves the state’s independent schools. Carroll said the body would mostly keep to “housekeeping” as it did so, although that could include clarifying situations in which private schools might be investigated by the state.
“I can assure you that, at least as long as I’m chair, this board is never going to go off into the wilderness like the board two chairs ago did,” Carroll said.
