Gov. Phil Scott has appointed former state senator Brian Campion to fill a soon-to-be-vacant seat on the 10-member State Board of Education. Campion, a Democrat from Bennington, served 14 years in legislature before choosing not to run for reelection last fall. Most recently, he chaired the Senate Education Committee.
Campion will replace Kim Gleason, a
former chair of the Essex Westford School Board who is wrapping up a six-year term on the board. The governor has not yet named a replacement for board member Jenna O’Farrell, whose term is also ending this month.
But Campion didn’t see it that way. On the Senate floor, he called Saunders an “exceptional candidate” with “vast experience, remarkable intellect and deep dedication for expanding opportunities.”
“I hate sharing my feelings, but today I am genuinely sad,” Campion told his colleagues at the time. “This has been an incredibly contentious few weeks … and personally I have never witnessed, in my 14 years in this building, character attacks toward what I consider a very, very good person.”
Vermont Senate Votes Down Ed Secretary Nominee Zoie Saunders
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Campion has also “demonstrated the ability to understand and consider multiple perspectives when addressing issues – which is a quality that is extremely important given the current focus on education transformation,” Wheeler wrote.
Campion, who works as an administrator at Bennington College, did not respond to a request for comment.
Vermont Senate Votes Down Ed Secretary Nominee Zoie Saunders
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During his time in the legislature, Campion’s actions at times aligned with the interests of independent schools.
In 2016, Campion and fellow Bennington County senator Dick Sears, who died last year, sought to transfer rulemaking authority from the State Board of Education to the Agency of Education. They introduced the proposal after the board sought new rules to require independent schools to offer special education services and provide more documentation about their finances. At the time, Campion also pushed to cut the State Board out of the process of selecting a new education secretary, and instead allow the governor to appoint a secretary directly, VTDigger.org reported at the time.
The governor’s current plan to overhaul education in the state contains a similar proposal: It would strip rulemaking authority from the State Board and give that power to the Agency of Education. Critics of the shift said it would concentrate too much power within the agency and allow rules to be written without input from the public and educators in the field.
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In 2023, as chair of the Senate Education Committee, Campion declined to take up a House bill that would have put more guardrails on independent schools that accept public dollars. It would have required stricter reporting of student performance, limited admissions requirements, and ensured that tuition rates for students using public dollars were the same or lower than those for private-pay students.Some said the governor’s selection of Campion represents a missed opportunity to put someone who has more experience with public schools on the state board.
“At a time when public education is in crisis, the Governor had the opportunity to appoint someone with direct experience in Vermont’s public schools — an educator, administrator or school board member,” the group wrote in a statement. “Campion’s record in the Vermont Senate of advancing policies that favored private institutions concerns us greatly, and we can only hope that he recognizes the urgency of this moment and finally chooses to start prioritizing Vermont’s public education system over protecting the interests of private schools.”