I am a data reporter and full-stack developer who writes breaking news and investigative features. I also acquire public records, analyze datasets, and build interactive data visualizations.
Currently covering education and voting data for Chalkbeat and Votebeat. Formerly of St. Louis Public Radio and St. Louis Magazine. Bylines also in The Riverfront Times, The Alton Telegraph, The Common Reader, The News-Press.
When the pandemic first sent Colorado students home from school, Rachael Sheetz worried about the chaos of remote learning, but as the caretaker for her elderly grandmother, she also worried about COVID. In her search for options for her two teenagers, she landed on Colorado Connections Academy, an online school.
When Chef Samantha Jones arrived at Juarez High School in Chicago six years ago, she discovered a shell of a culinary program. Jones set about to change that: She created a curriculum, arranged regular produce deliveries, and sought out opportunities for students to show off their skills outside the school's kitchen.
In January, Williamson County Schools issued a report on 31 texts from its K-5 English language arts curriculum that had been challenged as being obscene, "critical race theory," or inappropriate for elementary-agechildren. Complaints targeted books in all five grades, with two in kindergarten, five in first grade, ten in second, four in third, seven in fourth, and three infifth.
What happens to students after they graduate from high school? Schools largely don't know. At South Bend schools, for example, officials know that fewer than half of graduates went on to college in the past two years. But they don't follow the other 55%.
Once again, New York City parents may be facing questions about when to keep their children home from school or get them tested for COVID as they learn of possible exposures. To keep more children in school, the city changed its quarantine rules before students returned to classrooms after the winter break.
The fight to rebuild school communities after two years of pandemic-era uncertainty. The calls for help started the first week of classes at Malcolm X Shabazz High School. Week one: The police were called about a fight at the Newark school, police records from this September show. Week two: an assault in progress.
Investigative
Older Data Viz & Analysis
I FOIA'd, acquired, and analyzed the data. I also built d3.js bar and line charts, as well as the responsive HTML sidebars. (Side note: the sidebars have been bumped to full-width due to a CMS update).
I obtained, cleaned, and analyzed the data used to report four stories in this series, including this one. This story includes a leaflet.js map and a d3.js line chart, as well.
I located eight different property lists in blurry PDFs, OCR’d them with ABBYY, cleaned them in OpenRefine, removed duplicates, filtered them to the relevant properties, and then SQL joined them to a city database to evaluate their condition and permit history. After that, I analyzed everything in Pandas. Brent Jones (not me) built the app page.
I built line charts and small multiples in d3.js after validating the reporter's data.