Dan Nakaso
Dan Nakaso reports on how education, public health and social services intersect, with a focus on how Hawaii’s schools and universities manage crises, funding and major policy shifts. He is a reporter for The Honolulu Star-Advertiser and has also worked there in reporting and editing roles. His coverage follows public institutions through the pandemic, the rise of artificial intelligence and ongoing housing and homelessness pressures that shape students’ lives.
Hawaii public schools and education policy
Nakoso covers Hawaii’s public school system through concrete policy decisions and their impact on students and families. In his reporting on the decision not to require three-foot distancing in public schools, he explains how education officials weigh health guidance against the practical constraints of classrooms and staffing. He follows those stories through to questions of access and opportunity, detailing how benefits, support programs and even pathways to free college tuition are structured within the Department of Education.
His work also looks at how schools connect students to the labor market, including coverage of efforts to encourage students to enter the construction trades at a time when skilled workers are in high demand. In these pieces he links classroom programs, apprenticeships and industry partnerships to broader economic trends, such as the building boom around new technology projects. Across this strand of his beat, he writes straight news stories that quote education officials, union leaders and front-line educators, with an emphasis on explaining what new rules and incentives mean in practice for students and their families.
University of Hawaiʻi funding, technology and facilities
Nakoso’s higher education coverage centers on the University of Hawaiʻi as it takes on new roles in research, technology and workforce development. In his reporting on funding for a new healthcare-focused artificial intelligence data center at the university, he shows how research infrastructure is tied to medical outcomes, industry partnerships and training for future workers. He details the scale of investment, the agencies involved and the expectations for how the facility will improve care, from data analysis to clinical decision support.
His work tracks follow-on effects from these projects, including the demand they create for construction and technical trades and the pressure they put on campus facilities and nearby communities. In coverage referenced by local commentary on proposed library projects, Nakaso reports on university working groups formed to study potential sites and long-term plans, treating building decisions as public policy questions rather than internal campus matters. These stories place university decisions within the larger map of public spending, land use and community priorities, showing how higher education projects ripple through budgets, neighborhoods and the job market.
Healthcare, housing and social services around schools
Although his core beat is education, Nakaso regularly follows policy threads into healthcare and social services when they shape conditions for students and families. His coverage of health system payment changes, including a delay in implementing a new physician pay model, explains how shifts in insurer strategy affect access to care and the stability of local medical practices. He connects these developments to broader debates about quality, cost and the capacity of the healthcare system to support aging populations and school-age children alike.
Nakoso has reported extensively on homelessness and emergency housing responses, including stories on a planned “homeless command center” at new city offices and detailed coverage of shelters and service providers. His work on the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands explores how that agency seeks exceptions to statewide bans to pursue revenue and development tools, tying land policy and housing supply to long waiting lists and overcrowded households. In these pieces he leans on on-the-record interviews with agency leaders, advocates and people receiving services, presenting homelessness and housing not as separate social issues but as conditions that directly affect students’ ability to attend and succeed in school.
Reporting style and subjects of authority
Nakoso’s stories are built around access to decision-makers and institutions that control policy for schools and public services. He conducts one-on-one interviews with top officials, such as his extended sit-down with the governor to examine the state’s pandemic response, economic fallout and implications for schools and public programs. Across beats, he consistently foregrounds the voices of public agency heads, school leaders, medical executives and community organizations, using their comments to anchor explanations of new programs, regulations and spending priorities.
His reporting is straight, sourced news writing rather than commentary, and he often returns to the same policies as they move from proposal to implementation and revision. Whether covering classroom distancing rules, an AI-powered data center, a reworked physician pay model or new shelter facilities, he tracks timelines, funding details and accountability mechanisms in clear language. The result is a body of work that follows how policy is made and adjusted across education, health and housing, giving readers a continuous view of how large systems respond when strained by crisis or opportunity.
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.
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.
Alexandra Hardle
Alexandra Hardle brings a watchdog lens to K-12 schools, using concrete incidents to map how district power, oversight and accountability work in real life. She covers K-12 education for The Arizona Republic, focusing on school systems, governance and the lived impact of policy on students, families and educators. Her reporting shows how school governance can fail students and staff and what that reveals about district culture. She often covers flashpoints, such as the Nazi salute fallout in the Deer Valley district, as windows into deeper dysfunction, tracking how leadership responds, how trust breaks down and how conflicts unfold in public meetings. Her work sits at the intersection of accountability reporting and community stories, grounded in public records, formal rules and multiple stakeholder perspectives, with clear, direct language that explains how institutions make decisions and how ordinary people experience them.