John Spitters
John Spitters is a news anchor and reporter for Quinte News who tracks how education funding and school construction projects shape student spaces and local services. His recent coverage follows major additions at Murray Centennial Public School from initial funding announcements through building permits to the official opening of new classrooms. Across these stories he focuses on concrete details - dollar figures, square footage, classroom counts, and student capacity - rather than abstract policy.
School Infrastructure and Capacity
Spitters’ most distinctive education work centres on the physical expansion of Murray Centennial Public School and the capacity it creates for students.
In 2022 he reported on provincial funding of $4.6 million for an addition that would create 170 new student spaces at the school, tying the project to a broader initiative to build modern schools and child-care spaces. He highlighted the impact on working families by linking the added spaces directly to local demand for education and care.
He later covered municipal building permit activity around the same project, noting an $8 million permit for the addition and explaining that it would allow the school to welcome 170 more students.
In his 2026 story on the expansion’s opening, Spitters described the 22,000-square-foot addition in practical terms, listing three new kindergarten classrooms, four regular classrooms, staff and student collaborative spaces, outdoor play areas, and a new septic system. Across these pieces he builds a clear line from early capital commitments to finished infrastructure, showing how school boards, provincial ministries and municipalities intersect around a single school.
Education Funding and Government Commitments
Spitters’ education coverage consistently positions school projects within the province’s funding framework and the decisions of local school boards. In the Murray Centennial funding story he connects the $4.6 million allocation to a province-wide investment of nearly $500 million for new school and child-care spaces, naming the Minister of Education and the local member of provincial parliament involved in the announcement. He uses their statements to frame the project as part of a wider commitment to building “state-of-the-art schools,” while keeping the focus on the specific addition and the number of students it will serve.
In reporting the official opening of the Murray Centennial addition, he again centres the Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board and provincial representatives, describing how trustees joined community and municipal leaders to mark the new space. The details he chooses - funding total of $11.1 million, the configuration of classrooms, and inclusion of collaborative areas - underline how capital spending translates into daily learning environments.
A later story on how the school addition boosted building permit values reinforces this approach, as he links municipal permitting statistics to the concrete outcome of increased student capacity at the school.
Broader Local News and Public Safety
Alongside education, Spitters covers general local news, including police, courts and emergency incidents. His byline appears on a story about additional jail time ordered after a stabbing in Trenton, where he reports on sentencing and the consequences for the offender. He also writes about a fire at an east-end Belleville business, describing the incident and documenting the response, supported by his own photographs.
Category pages for Quinte News show his name attached to items such as Belleville Police Service commendations, indicating his role in covering law enforcement recognition and community-facing policing stories. These pieces mirror the direct style of his education reporting: clear incident-led leads, straightforward timelines, and emphasis on official actions and outcomes rather than commentary.
Community Life, Sports and Rural Coverage
Spitters’ recent work also documents community initiatives and rural life. In a feature titled “It’s about a hand up not a handout,” he reports on the packing of hundreds of food bags, focusing on the logistics of distribution and the scale of support being organized.
The story frames charity work in terms of tangible outputs - bags packed, dates, and locations - rather than slogans.
He extends that concrete approach to rural coverage in a piece inviting people to “Learn about what goes on down on the farm,” which promotes opportunities for the public to understand farm operations and the work behind local agriculture.
Sports coverage forms another strand of his archive, including reporting on junior hockey playoff games involving the Trenton Golden Hawks and Wellington Dukes. Across these non-education stories, Spitters maintains a consistent focus on specific events, numbers and places, reflecting long experience in local news and anchoring roles within Quinte Broadcasting’s news operations.
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.