Utah has a new Superintendent of Public Instruction.
A Republican Utah State Board of Education member who leads a group of charter schools will be the state’s new top education administrator. The board voted 12-to-2 to appoint Molly L. Hart to the position on Wednesday night. Republican members Emily Green and Christina Boggess were the nay votes.
Hart will be the chief executive officer of the state board and will be directed by the 15-member body.
She succeeds Sydnee Dickson, who announced earlier this year that she would resign this summer after nearly a decade at the helm. Educators, board members and lawmakers often spoke highly of Dickson.
Hart was first elected to the board in 2020 and is a vice chair of the governing body. In 2024, the Sandy resident won reelection against Democratic challenger John Arthur. Hart is the executive director of Summit Academy, a K-12 public charter school that has four campuses in the Salt Lake Valley. Its website describes the academy as “for people who still believe in public schools but want the elite feel of a private school.”
Before joining the academy in 2023, she spent more than two decades working as a middle school principal in the Canyons School District and as a principal in the Muscogee County School District in Georgia. She has a doctorate in educational leadership from Valdosta State University and earned a Utah PTA Outstanding School Administrator Award.
The other finalist for the job was L. Ben Dalton, who currently leads the Kane County School District in southern Utah.
The two finalists were selected by the board’s search committee from a pool of 22 applicants. During a May 21 meeting, board members interviewed Hart and Dalton publicly for 90 minutes each. They were asked about their education and leadership philosophies, how they would go about improving student outcomes and how they’d address political issues. The board then went into a four-hour closed-door meeting to make their decision, taking two hours longer than board leaders had anticipated when they announced the schedule to the public.
During her questioning, Hart talked about leading the statewide office to be “tight on outcomes, loose on procedures.” By that, Hart said she wants to hold school districts and charter schools accountable, but also give them autonomy to innovate.
“Education is the promise we make to the future,” Hart said in a statement after the vote. “As I step into this role, my mission is clear: to ensure every child in Utah, no matter their background or circumstance, has access to an excellent education. That work begins with listening—to students, to educators, to families—and building a system where every voice matters and every student can thrive.”
Hart’s selection leaves a vacancy on the state board. While it’s an elected body, in this case, it’ll be up to Gov. Spencer Cox to appoint a new member, per state code. Since Hart is a Republican, the party’s state central committee will nominate three people for Cox to choose from. That person will serve until Hart’s term ends at the beginning of 2029.
Hart takes over at a time of uncertainty in public education. The Trump administration wants to shut down the U.S. Department of Education and “return power over education to states and local communities,” a plan the governor said he’s behind. Congress would need to approve that plan. President Donald Trump also wants to slash federal funding for education and has threatened to withhold money from schools that don’t do as the administration instructs. The administration has also implemented massive cuts in education research.
With the board, Hart will develop the state’s education strategy. According to the job posting, she will be “responsible for furthering the vision of academic and organizational excellence in the K-12 educational system in Utah,” as well as “driving statewide accountability to our education system.”
