Brooke Sjoberg
Brooke Sjoberg connects close coverage of local school districts with detailed reporting on how growth, business activity and city decisions shape those classrooms and their communities. She reports for Community Impact on Bastrop, Hutto and Round Rock ISDs, as well as development in the greater Austin area, and has been with the outlet since May 2021.
Her work stands out for its use of hard numbers, careful documentation of change over time and clear explanations of what local decisions mean for residents.
Education reporting across Bastrop, Hutto and Round Rock ISDs
Sjoberg’s core beat is public education, with a particular emphasis on district-wide performance and board actions in Bastrop, Hutto and Round Rock ISDs.
In her coverage of Round Rock ISD’s STAAR end-of-course exams, she breaks out passing rates by subject, compares them directly to the previous year and notes how local scores stack up against state averages, giving readers concrete context for headline claims about “significant improvement.” She walks through results for Algebra I, Biology, English I and II, and U.S. History, highlighting which exams gained the most ground and where performance slipped, showing a habit of anchoring education stories in precise, comparative data rather than general statements.
Her reporting on Hutto ISD board activity follows a similar pattern of specificity. In coverage of the installation of new trustees following a May board election, she details who is being seated, the timing of their swearing-in and how the move fits into the district’s broader governance calendar. Across district stories, she centers official actions and measurable outcomes, prioritising information families, staff and taxpayers can use to understand how their school systems are changing.
School governance and city policy in context
Alongside campus performance and board elections, Sjoberg tracks how city and special-district decisions intersect with the institutions she covers. When Round Rock officials consider extending an agreement with the Meadows at Chandler Creek Municipal Utility District, she outlines the length of the original 40-year deal, the impending expiration date and the new deadline city leaders are weighing for continued negotiations.
By spelling out dates, terms and the procedural steps ahead, she shows residents how long-running agreements can shape local services and budgets.
This attention to governance detail complements her school board work. Together, these stories map the web of city, utility and school entities that influence daily life in the same set of communities. Rather than isolating education from its surroundings, she situates district-level developments within the broader landscape of public bodies, infrastructure decisions and bond-funded projects that support them.
Her questions to community groups about future career and technical education offerings further indicate an interest in how education policy links to workforce preparation and local economic needs.
Development, business openings and community impact
Beyond classrooms and council chambers, Sjoberg reports extensively on business openings, closures and development activity, especially in Round Rock. In a multi-item story on Round Rock business updates, she compiles a dozen changes ranging from food trucks to a vision care provider, noting each business’s location, status and key dates such as grand openings or relocation timelines. The piece reads as a practical ledger for residents, providing addresses, shopping-center names and brief descriptions that make it easy to picture where each change is happening.
Her business coverage ranges from small, locally owned concepts to national chains. In a feature on The Gelato Lab, she blends operational details - house-made offerings and the shop’s exact address - with the owner’s comments about community support, giving a sense of both the product and its place in local life. When the last Austin-area Hooters location closes, she ties the shuttered restaurant to the company’s broader bankruptcy process, cites the effective closure date posted on the building and lists the site’s freeway location, underscoring the wider chain-level story while keeping the focus on what changed on the ground.
She also contributes to coverage of larger capital and archival projects, such as a multi-byline piece on a new $210 million archive facility for the state library system, which sits at the intersection of infrastructure, public access to information and long-term records management. Across development stories, she consistently includes dollar figures, opening targets and land-use decisions that show how growth is reshaping corridors and neighborhoods already familiar to her education readers.
Regional roundups and cross-edition reporting
In addition to filing beat stories, Sjoberg compiles regional trending roundups that pull together key developments from across the Austin area. These pieces typically package five or six items at a time, touching on topics such as a card club reopening after legal scrutiny, a denied development proposal, restaurant news and school planning updates.
The format highlights her role as a general assignment resource for the newsroom, able to synthesize disparate local developments into a single briefing for readers who want a quick scan of what changed.
Her byline also appears in multiple Community Impact print editions, including Pflugerville–Hutto and New Braunfels, where she shares credit on coverage spanning from local archives to regional issues. That cross-edition work, combined with her calls for input in community forums, points to a reporter who moves fluidly between hyperlocal school-district reporting, city and utility governance, and the broader development stories that connect those beats. Throughout, she maintains a steady emphasis on specifics - names, dates, dollar amounts and addresses - that makes her stories usable as reference points long after the initial news cycle.
4 more education journalists.
Abdul Latif Jameel
Abdul Latif Jameel publishes long-form, research-led pieces on how emerging technologies and scientific advances reshape education, industry, and society. He writes for the Abdul Latif Jameel masthead at the intersection of learning, innovation, and applied science, with a focus on technology, skills, and the future of learning. He explains complex fields such as quantum sensing in clear, accessible terms, breaking down frontier science and tying it to real-world applications. His coverage links breakthroughs in sensing, data, and automation to training, curriculum, and lifelong learning. He treats education as an applied system connected to industry, policy, infrastructure, and human development. He reports in an analytical, explanatory style, using research, pilots, and large-scale initiatives to examine how technologies are implemented, evaluated, and scaled in learning and training environments.
Abril Preciado
Abril Preciado is an Emmy award-winning bilingual television journalist at FOX6 News Milwaukee who focuses on education, school crises and policy decisions affecting students, families and staff. She follows school communities over months, from emergency response through investigations, relocation plans and the first day back in class. Her reporting on the Lincoln Avenue School fire covers displacement, safety changes, rebuilding and the move to temporary space. She also uses public records to examine local officials, test official claims and connect government conduct to public trust. Before joining FOX6, she reported for Univision in Sacramento, covering the Farm Workers March, wildfires, politics and the Latino community, and contributed border reporting for a national radio network. She centers families, explains complex decisions clearly and focuses on the human effects of policy.
Adria Iraheta
Adria Iraheta is a community-focused reporter at Denver7, distinct for centering students, families and residents in every story about schools, neighborhoods and public services. She covers how decisions by school districts, local agencies and public institutions land in daily life, with a particular focus on Aurora and Arapahoe County. Her beat sits at the intersection of education, community issues, public services, safety, infrastructure, health and climate, from job cuts in a school district to a new transit safety app, DMV outages, street changes and record heat waves. With a decade of local television reporting experience, she reports on the ground in specific local scenes, using plain language, direct questions to officials and clear explanations to show how policies, programs and changes affect the people who live, study and work in Colorado communities.
Alan J. Borsuk
Alan J. Borsuk stands out for connecting what happens in schools to the policy and political decisions behind them. He writes in-depth K-12 education analysis for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and serves as a senior fellow in law and public policy at Marquette University Law School. His work focuses on Milwaukee Public Schools, school choice, literacy, teacher pipelines, and school accountability. He uses long-range perspective, detailed reporting, and structured analysis to explain how reforms unfold, why they stall, and what they mean for students and leaders. He has also written on vouchers, Teach for America, discipline, and teacher evaluation, drawing on decades as a reporter and editor on education and public policy.