Celeste Percy-Beauregard
Celeste Percy-Beauregard reports on education and civic life for The Hamilton Spectator, with a particular focus on how Brant County school boards and local institutions manage money, power and public trust. Her work stands out for following the full arc of a story, from policy decisions and scandals through to budgets, legal costs and the practical impact on students and families.
School board finances and governance in Brant County
As a Local Journalism Initiative reporter covering Brant County for The Hamilton Spectator, Percy-Beauregard centres much of her reporting on school boards’ financial health and governance. In coverage of the Grand Erie District School Board, she details how the board moved into a $3.7-million deficit after nearly a decade without one, laying out operating and capital budget figures and explaining how expenses outpaced revised projections. She treats budget stories as accountability pieces, using specific numbers and timelines to show how board decisions translate into structural deficits and the pressures they create on the system.
Her reporting on Catholic and public boards similarly foregrounds institutional responsibility, tracking how trustees and administrators explain their choices to the community. Across these pieces she returns to the same themes: the transparency of board decision-making, the stewardship of public funds, and the long-term consequences of financial missteps for classrooms, services and staff.
Education scandals and their community fallout
Percy-Beauregard’s education coverage does not stop at the initial controversy; she stays with a story as it ripples through the community.
In her reporting on a Brant Catholic school board’s Italy trip fiasco, she documents new receipts that push the board’s costs for the episode close to $190,000, connecting legal fees and other expenses back to the original decision and its fallout. In related coverage of a new Brantford high school removing the St. Padre Pio name to distance itself from the scandal, she shows how reputational damage at board level ultimately prompts changes to school identity and how those changes are communicated to families and staff.
These stories illustrate a consistent approach: she links governance lapses and ethics questions to concrete outcomes such as rebranding, legal exposure and strained community confidence. Rather than treating each development as a standalone item, her reporting traces the sequence - trip, backlash, investigation, costs, and symbolic steps like renaming - so readers see how a single misjudgment reshapes local education over time.
Council chambers, workplaces and civic policy
Alongside school boards, Percy-Beauregard covers wider civic issues that intersect with education and local life, from council debates to workplace safety.
In a story on Hamilton’s proposed moratorium on AI data centres, she reports from council chambers on how only half of councillors attended a session with experts before a landmark vote, and explains how an interim control bylaw under the Planning Act would temporarily ban large-scale AI data centres while land-use and zoning rules are developed. The piece combines political reporting with clear explanation of regulatory tools, showing how municipal policy shapes the infrastructure that surrounds schools and neighbourhoods.
Her coverage of a workplace incident at GreenMantra Technologies in Brantford similarly blends breaking news with attention to civic implications. In that story, she reports that two contractors were injured at the industrial site and situates the incident within local safety and enforcement concerns, reinforcing her broader interest in how institutions protect the people who work and learn within them.
Service features on travel and the outdoors
Outside her education and civic beat, Percy-Beauregard maintains a distinct body of work in service features and travel writing, particularly for Northern Ontario Travel. In a guide to hunting in Ontario for beginners, she introduces novice readers to regulations, safety and practical considerations, pairing factual detail with accessible advice. Her fall colour report for Ontario highlights specific viewing experiences and itineraries, positioning scenic drives and hikes as structured outings rather than generic sightseeing.
She brings the same practical focus to lifestyle pieces on surfing the Great Lakes and finding standout ice cream in Northern Ontario, framing each article around clear guidance on where to go and what to expect. Professional profiles also note experience covering entrepreneurs, community-builders, artists, wellness and travel across various publications, underscoring her ability to switch between hard news on public institutions and narrative features that showcase local people and places. Taken together, this portfolio shows a reporter who is most distinctive when she connects the mechanics of governance and place - boards, bylaws, budgets, landscapes - to the everyday experiences of the communities she covers.
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.