Yeah, well, that was depressing.

The Senate Education Committee held its confirmation hearing this afternoon for Zoie Saunders, Gov. Phil Scott’s choice for education secretary. She was smiling broadly as the hearing commenced, and she had every reason to smile at the end. The committee failed to raise some very pertinent issues. When they did pose tough questions, they often carefully blunted the sharp edge. (Commitee chair Sen. Brian Campion led the league in “tell me a little bit about” questions, which is an open invitation for the interviewee to wander off in whatever direction they want.) They often asked about what she would do as education secretary or what policies she would pursue, which Saunders easily sidestepped in the familiar manner of Supreme Court nominees batting away hypotheticals.

The bulk of the hearing was a comfortable exchange of educational jargon, the wrapping of empty thought into multisyllabic cloth that obscures the emptiness of the dialogue. It’s familiar ground for Saunders, who’s been a professional educator for the better part of two decades, and it’s equally familiar for members of the Education Committee, who exist in the rarefied air of the profession’s bafflegab. It makes them feel smart, don’t you know.

What the committee failed to do is treat the hearing like a job interview with an applicant with questionable qualifications. The point should have been to explore Saunders’ background and clarify her rightness for the position. The committee accomplished little in that regard. At the end of the affair, there was no hint of any continuing opposition to her nomination. I will be stunned if the committee doesn’t recommend approval by the full Senate. Hell, they’ve set aside an entire… 15 minutes… for committee discussion of her nomination Wednesday afternoon.

Campion set the tone in his introductory remarks, which included a slam at those “dismissing someone prior to [the confirmation] process.” That seemed to be aimed directly at the VT-NEA and the Vermont Principals Association and Vermont Superintendents Association and the Vermont School Boards Association, which all raised concerns about her nomination and/or outright opposed it before the hearing, and at members of the Legislature who had done the same.

Hey, maybe he even reads my stuff, I don’t know.

Here’s the thing. It is absolutely fair to raise questions, and it is unfair of Campion to slam anyone who does so. Given what we know about her experience, I believe it’s absolutely fair to conclude, with or without the wisdom of Our Betters in the Senate, that Saunders isn’t the best choice for the job.

And if Campion expected us to depend on his committee to dispel concerns, well, the panel proceeded to thoroughly disappoint us.

The only member who came close to asking tough questions was Sen. Martine Gulick. The third Democrat on the panel, Sen. Nader Hashim, barely spoke at all. The two committee Republicans, Sens. David Weeks and Terry Williams, tossed nothing but softballs, as expected. I don’t know if they were affected at all by the watchful presence of their senior colleague from Rutland County, Sen. Brian Collamore, who attended the meeting for unknown reasons. As did two members of the cabinet, Agriculture Secretary Anson Tebbetts and Transportation Secretary Joe Flynn, who sat directly behind Saunders. Do cabinet nominees get an honor guard?

There was little pushback on Saunders’ repeated, questionable contention that charter schools are public schools. Her argument: In states that have established charter schools in law, those schools are subject to the terms of the law. Never mind that most charters are not answerable to the public in any direct way — no elections, no say over budgeting, no way for constituents to try to affect school policies. When Gulick asked her if charters and independent schools should be subject to the same rules as public schools, Saunders’ reply focused on test scores, not concerns about unequal enforcement.

“Charter schools are public schools” is a weak argument and shouldn’t have been allowed to go unchallenged. The argument allows Saunders to claim that she has spent much of her career “in public education,” which is manifestly untrue. She has, in fact, spent a total of three months working in a public school system in any capacity, and that is a big fat problem with her resumé.

On at least three occasions in her testimony, Saunders uttered the phrase “cradle to career,” which is a Phil Scott classic. He’s downplayed the idea in recent years because the concept was politically impossible: Extend the meaning of “public education” to include preschool and secondary/career education and stretch the Education Fund to cover schooling before and after K-12. Saunders’ resurrection of the phrase doesn’t make me feel any more confident about the administration’s policy goals.

You will be as shocked as Captain Renault to learn that Senate Education didn’t borrow much from my list of questions for Saunders. They asked her about her position with the Broward County Public Schools, but didn’t mention her extremely brief tenure there — or the fact that she left after only three months on the job in the middle of the complicated and controversial school reorganization process that she was supposed to spearhead.

They didn’t ask her about her unusual job search last year — pursuing the BCPS and Vermont jobs simultaneously, and accepting the Broward position after she’d already been named as one of three finalists up here.

They didn’t ask about her apparent lack of experience managing large bureaucracies. Her previous positions appear to have been entirely or largely strategic. She had to collaborate with others, but she didn’t need to lead a large team or handle all the administrative challenges of heading a sizeable entity.

And of course, no one brought up her recent visit to an elementary school where, reportedly, admission was limited to students, not members of the media or adults, including school staff.

As a colloquy on issues facing public education, the hearing was not without value. As a vetting of a questionable nominee for a crucial position, the hearing was an utter failure. I’m afraid I’m back to my original view that Saunders will be confirmed by the Senate, and the vote is unlikely to be close.