This “backstory” is a part of a collection of articles that describes some of the obstacles that Seven Days reporters faced while pursuing Vermont news, events and people in 2025.
In March 2024, Vermont’s public-education establishment bristled when Gov. Phil Scott announced Zoie Saunders as the state’s new education secretary. People expressed skepticism about Saunders’ lack of experience as a teacher and school administrator and her very un-Vermonty professional background as an executive at a for-profit charter school company in Florida. When lawmakers declined to confirm Saunders, the governor appointed her on an interim basis anyway.
A year into Saunders’ tenure, my editors and I decided it would be a good time to see how she was coping with the less-than-warm welcome to Vermont, what she’d accomplished so far and what she still hoped to achieve.
From the start, Saunders was a reluctant subject. I began asking for a sit-down interview with the secretary in December 2024 but received the brush-off from her communications person. In February, I asked again to interview her in person and to shadow her for a few hours. Instead, I was offered a 30-minute virtual interview.
Dissatisfied with that option, I found out that Saunders would be testifying at the Statehouse on the same day I planned to cover a committee meeting there. I used that coincidence to finagle an in-person interview in the capitol building’s cafeteria. Saunders was friendly and polite, but she immediately stopped me when I asked personal questions such as where she lived or the age of her kids.
Toward the end of the interview, which Saunders had generously let go well past the 30-minute mark, she explained that she wasn’t trying to be elusive; she was just protective of her children. As a mom, I understood that instinct. But I also felt that, as a public figure about whom many in Vermont had questions, Saunders could have been more forthcoming.
I was eventually able to get enough information from Saunders and those who knew her to produce a thorough-enough profile. But when we asked to photograph Saunders for the cover, we were again met with resistance. Saunders’ comms person told me that she wanted to know the headline of the story first. Divulging that would have been against Seven Days policy, so the photo shoot fell through. We ended up relying on candid shots from photographer Jeb Wallace-Brodeur. The pictures were perfectly adequate. It would have been nice, though, to get something a little more personal.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Most Reluctant Subject”
This article appears in Dec 24 2025 – Jan 6 2026.
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