Legislative & Policy Reporting

The first in a forthcoming series examining the initial impacts of a $168 million school choice program in Alabama. This project was fueled by a first-of-its-kind database of private school tuition and other characteristics, as well as dozens of interviews with parents, school staff, policymakers and vendors.

Alabama's retired teachers have not seen their retirement checks change since 2009. For this collaboration with the Alabama Reflector, I spoke with numerous retired educators about how they were handling rising costs and threats to healthcare premiums. This story was cited in legislative meetings during the following session, as lawmakers worked to create a new system for approving cost-of-living-increases.

Since my second week on the job at AL.com, I've closely followed the evolution of anti-CRT and anti-DEI laws in the state. I covered actions at local school boards, the state school board and the state legislature. I covered student protests, live-tweeting and fact-checking lawmakers in real time. I spoke with educators and sat in classrooms. And I unearthed documents showing how much colleges were actually spending on these programs.

The story above was one of the first to trace the initial impacts of state legislation, weeks before the law kicked in. Two key sources in the story were later recruited by the NAACP to participate in an ongoing lawsuit against the University of Alabama and the state.

Advocates said my watchdog coverage of education budget changes helped pressure lawmakers to fund summer meals for children. The legislature later allocated $10 million in the budget for the program.

Quick-turn accountability coverage of a complex aspect of Alabama’s reading law: assessments and vendors. My familiarity with the science of reading and prior coverage of the state’s literacy efforts enabled me to produce this piece, sourced with several affected families, in just a couple of days.

A quick-turn accountability piece on political intervention in public health policy and its impact on Alabama teens’ access to COVID-19 vaccines.

I was the lead reporter on the newsroom's coverage of the historic closure of Birmingham-Southern College. After months of a political tug-of-war, I broke the news of its closure in March 2024. This final story reflects on the financial and political factors that led to its final commencement.