Catherine Whitnall
Catherine Whitnall reports on education and community issues for The Peterborough Examiner, covering how local institutions shape daily life for students, families and staff. Her coverage follows decisions made by school boards and community organizers into classrooms, childcare centres and youth programs. Across her recent work she uses specific local examples and personal stories to show how policy and funding choices land on the people they affect. In one story, she examines union criticism of deep staffing cuts at a Catholic school board, treating labour concerns as part of the wider education landscape.
School Boards, Labour Issues and System Pressures
Whitnall’s education reporting centres on how school board decisions and labour actions change the conditions in which educators and students work and learn. Her coverage of union condemnation of deep staffing cuts at a Catholic school board focuses on the consequences of reduced support and the tensions between budget control and service levels. In pieces that reference Trillium Lakelands District School Board and the Peterborough Victoria Northumberland and Clarington Catholic District School Board, she tracks how board initiatives and partnerships translate into concrete opportunities or challenges for young people. She brings in union voices, board representatives and community partners, making her stories useful for understanding how multiple stakeholders negotiate change in the education system.
STEAM Initiatives and Opportunities for Girls
A recurring strand in Whitnall’s work is coverage of programs designed to expand educational opportunities, particularly in science, technology, engineering, arts and math for girls.
Her article on a Kawartha Lakes event that helps girls build STEAM skills highlights collaboration among local school boards, community foundations and women-focused organizations, underlining how partnerships can open new pathways for students. She pays attention to the structure of these initiatives - who organizes them, how they are funded and which age groups they target - alongside the stories of participants and organizers.
The result is coverage that is both program-level and human-level, useful for understanding how equity and empowerment efforts are being built into local education offerings.
Indigenous and Alternative Education Models
Whitnall also reports on alternative approaches to education, especially those rooted in Indigenous culture and community leadership. In her story about an Anishinaabe woman who began by teaching her own children culture, language and heritage and then moved to launch a private school for low-income urban Indigenous children, she follows the evolution from personal need to institution-building. The piece foregrounds the founder’s voice and experience, including the recognition that children were thriving in a culturally grounded setting and the commitment to make that experience accessible to others.
Through this kind of reporting, Whitnall gives readers a clear view of how grassroots education initiatives attempt to address gaps in mainstream systems.
Community Life, Childcare and Local Enterprise
Beyond formal schooling, Whitnall’s education beat extends into childcare and broader community life, reflecting how learning environments and support systems exist across many settings. Her work on childcare waitlists ties early-years access to wider debates about capacity, funding and family stress, situating childcare firmly within the education and social policy conversation.
She also writes about local enterprises and infrastructure when they intersect with public use and safety, such as a story on a downtown business owner seeking to purchase a laneway to ensure parking and improve safety for customers and tenants.
Coverage of local arts, including a piece on leadership transition at the Kawartha Lakes Concert Band, and an interview with novelist Hollay Ghadery, shows her interest in cultural organizations and creative work as part of the community ecosystem surrounding schools and families. Together, these threads present a reporter who treats education as one part of a connected network of services, spaces and stories.
4 more education journalists.
Abby Russchen
Abby Russchen ties education, community institutions and individual stories together, showing how policies and decisions register in people’s lives. She reports for CBC on education and community life, working across text, video and photography for different CBC platforms. Her education coverage centres student achievement, provincial and national test results, classroom technology and the forces shaping learning conditions, connecting policy language and expert analysis to observable changes in performance. She treats AI, screens and digital tools as part of the education beat, focusing on their impact on student well-being. She also reports on community institutions and local services, from bank closures and changing city status to small-business growth. Her human-interest features follow people, public memory and recognition, and her long-form background supports detailed, fact-grounded narratives across formats.
Alexa Phillips
Alexa Phillips reports on education as a financial system, tracing who pays, who benefits and who bears the risk when policy changes reshape schools and universities. She covers education policy, funding and regulation for The i Paper, with a consistent focus on money, power and their impact on students and staff. Her reporting follows fees, budgets and reform into classrooms and lecture halls, using concrete figures to show how tax changes, funding mechanisms and loan reforms translate into course cuts, job losses and access. Phillips brings wider experience on public services and regulation, including work on gambling oversight and healthcare access, so education sits in a larger accountability story. She writes straightforward, reported news pieces that combine policy detail, financial data and case studies, built from official records and regular call‑outs to readers affected by the systems she covers.
Alexandra Holyk
Alexandra Holyk is a multi-skilled journalist at CTV News who reports on education and youth issues through the daily lives of students, families, and local communities. She covers school and campus decisions, student safety, youth behaviour, and neighbourhood incidents, with a focus on how they affect the people directly involved. Her work includes stories on graduation choices, concerns about Black students in a school board, federal research funding at the University of Waterloo, and students who helped after a cyclist collision. She also covers vandalism and other local disruptions around schools and neighbourhoods. Holyk pitches, researches, shoots, writes, edits, and presents stories for broadcast and digital platforms. Her previous work includes video journalism for provincial coverage, along with reporting for campus and regional outlets and major Canadian newspapers and business media.
Annabelle Olivier
Annabelle Olivier ties system-level themes in Quebec’s school system to the immediate realities of parents and students, treating education as a lived experience rather than an abstract policy field. She is a digital journalist with CBC News, covering education and related public policy. Her work spans data breaches and digital privacy in schools, institutional conflicts and labour disputes that disrupt study plans, education on the campaign trail, and school infrastructure and land use. She reports on incidents like mass emails exposing sensitive parent data, suspended classes that leave students feeling like bargaining chips, and proposals to turn racetracks into schools. Her background in digital production at another major Canadian broadcaster shapes an online-first reporting style, grounded in specific incidents, clear descriptions, and detailed, verifiable facts drawn from documents, statements and interviews.