Howard Blume
Howard Blume is a veteran education reporter at the Los Angeles Times whose coverage tracks the power struggles, policy shifts and budget decisions that shape public schools in Los Angeles and across California. He concentrates on school district governance, with particular attention to the Los Angeles Unified School District and other systems navigating state intervention, local control and structural reform. His reporting connects boardroom decisions to their consequences on campuses, especially around enrollment decline, school closures and modernization plans. He returns repeatedly to how naming, discipline and civil rights disputes play out in schools, treating them as central tests of what public education stands for.
LAUSD governance, power and local control
Blume is the primary education reporter on the Los Angeles Unified School District beat, following the district’s leadership, board politics and management through long-running conflicts and policy shifts. His work on LAUSD includes detailed coverage of falling enrollment and budget uncertainty that has prompted warnings of layoffs and cuts, explaining how internal projections translate into staffing decisions and program risk. He covers debates over which campuses the district should keep open, close, refurbish or rebuild as enrollment dives, probing how officials weigh community needs against financial constraints and long-term planning. Beyond LAUSD, he reports on state oversight and district takeovers, including the winding down of a long-running state control of the Inglewood school system and its transition toward local governance, highlighting what prolonged intervention has meant for students and the community. He approaches these governance stories as systems reporting, mapping laws, board rules, oversight mechanisms and union positions so readers can see who controls what and how those levers are used.
Enrollment decline, budgets and school facilities
A recurring strand in Blume’s coverage is the impact of enrollment decline on district finances and facilities.
He tracks how shrinking student numbers drive tough budget decisions, including warnings about layoffs, program cuts and the reshaping of schools. His reporting on which campuses to close, upgrade or rebuild as enrollment drops examines the tension between preserving neighborhood schools and consolidating resources, often quoting officials who are weighing costly modernization against the likelihood that some sites may be shuttered. He also follows efforts to rethink how students use technology and screen time, covering new policies designed to limit students’ time on devices and the arguments around academic benefit, health and funding for digital tools.
Across these stories, he focuses on the practical stakes: how budget lines, bond programs and capital plans translate into classroom conditions, staffing levels and the physical state of schools.
Civil rights, identity and school culture battles
Blume devotes significant attention to civil rights and identity issues in schools, especially where they intersect with district policy and community conflict. He has reported on court rulings that shape how schools handle student gender identity, explaining decisions that keep it illegal for districts to require staff to inform parents, while mandating disclosure when parents ask directly, and situating those outcomes within broader debates over parental rights and student privacy.
His coverage of protests at school board meetings, including “parents rights” demonstrations over LGBTQ policies that led to arrests, shows how national culture wars manifest in local education politics and security responses.
He also writes about school naming and symbolism, such as the decision to remove César Chávez’s name and image from district properties and the move by Jordan High to sever ties with a namesake associated with eugenics, detailing how communities grapple with history and representation on their campuses. Discipline and restorative justice are another thread: he has explored why some LAUSD teachers resist new approaches to handling behavior, outlining concerns over classroom control, training and support, and how those debates affect daily school life. In these stories, he treats policy as lived experience, showing how abstract principles become contentious practices in hallways, classrooms and on school walls.
Experience, recognition and other platforms
Blume covers education full time for the Los Angeles Times and is described as an education reporter focused on local school issues. He has covered education in Los Angeles for more than two decades, including a period working as an editor at the Jewish Journal, giving him long historical context on district leadership and recurring reform cycles.
His work has earned major recognition, including the top investigative reporting prize from the Los Angeles Press Club and a print Journalist of the Year honor from the Los Angeles chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Beyond print, he produced and co-hosted the public-affairs radio program “Deadline L.A.” on KPFK-FM for 15 years, and that show was honored as the best radio public affairs program by the L.A. Press Club.
Across these platforms, his focus stays consistent: detailed, document-based reporting on how education policy, governance and civil rights disputes affect real schools, taught from the vantage point of someone who has watched the same institutions evolve over many years.
4 more education journalists.
Bridie Short
Bridie Short reports on how learning environments shape young people’s experiences and their engagement with wider issues. She writes about education for Lynn News, a local news publication with a focus on community stories. Her coverage centres on classrooms and other learning settings, with attention to the people and events that define daily life there. She has written about drama students paying homage to the climate emergency with a performance, framing their creative response as part of their educational experience and blending arts coverage with an education lens. Her education reporting sits within a broader community news agenda, linking school and college stories to general news. Her pieces are grounded in concrete events and activities, showing what students and staff are doing rather than focusing on abstract policy.
Catherine Strohfeldt
Catherine Strohfeldt reports how education policy, money and behaviour collide in Queensland classrooms and childcare services, focusing on what government decisions mean for students, families and teachers day to day. She is an education reporter at Brisbane Times covering schools, universities and early learning alongside related state policy. She often starts with a single school, subject or provider to explain shifts in funding, discipline and workforce conditions, treating suspension statistics, surveys and on-the-ground accounts as complementary evidence. Her work links school fees, capital funding and teacher pay deals to who can access which schools and on what terms. Her beat extends into childcare chains in crisis and university leadership and governance. She also covers Queensland government, planning and environmental issues, showing how housing, health and coastal decisions reshape the communities in her education reporting.
Charles Bliss
Charles Bliss is a features-led reporter at the Eastern Daily Press whose distinct focus is education told through human stories about schools, pupils and the adults who work with them. He writes about what it feels like to be in a classroom or school community, using specific events, characters and concrete activity to show how reading, creativity and wellbeing are encouraged in young people. His education coverage centres children and teachers rather than policy, turning visits, campaigns and workshops into narrative pieces with practical detail. He gives particular weight to wellbeing, mental health and sensory learning, linking health, psychology and horticulture through tangible examples. Alongside education he covers health, environment, behaviour, everyday guidance and local innovation, using plain explanation, step-by-step advice and narrative structure to show how people learn, adapt and look after each other in their communities.
Conor Duffy
Conor Duffy stands out for linking education policy to the daily lives of students, parents and teachers, treating the classroom as part of a wider social system. He is the ABC’s national education and parenting reporter. His beat spans schools, universities and family life. He covers education policy, test scores, rankings, funding, teacher workload, behaviour, school refusal, student wellbeing and parenting stress. He reports on NAPLAN, university rankings, the Job Ready Graduates legislation and the cost of humanities degrees. He also covers privacy and school data. His reporting combines hard data, policy detail and personal stories. He has also done foreign, environment and investigative work for the ABC, including as North America correspondent, and has worked across Lateline, 7.30 and AM.