This first appeared in James Farrell's weekly education newsletter. Sign up here to get it to your inbox first.
If you’re reading this, you’re probably passionate about education here in the Charlotte region and across North Carolina.
You might have questions on the upcoming student assignment changes at Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.
Maybe you want to stay up-to-date on the election for state superintendent of public instruction.
And, you definitely thought Ann Doss Helms was an indispensable source of information on all of these things before she retired from WFAE last month after two amazing decades covering education.
Well, I feel the same way!
I’m James Farrell and, as of last week, I’m the new education reporter here at WFAE.
I’m so excited to dive into this crucial beat and start doing my best to tell the stories that matter most to educators, students and taxpayers in our city and across our region.
But first, a little about myself:
Admittedly, I’m new to Charlotte — I’m a native New Yorker who moved down here from Buffalo with my wife and son last year. But I’m not new to journalism or the mission of public radio.
I’ve been a journalist for eight years, most recently as a breaking news reporter at Forbes, though my passion has always been local news. I’ve had the privilege of reporting in a wide variety of communities, from the borough of Queens in New York City as a reporter for the Queens Tribune, to Fremont, Nebraska, as a staffer at the daily Fremont Tribune.
In Buffalo, I spent four years as a reporter and the eventual editor-in-chief of The Hamburg Sun, a local paper covering the suburbs. And for two years, I served as the local Weekend Edition host at WBFO, Buffalo’s NPR station.
The common thread through all of that has been education — at every outlet I’ve worked, education has been a pillar of our coverage and has always been one of the beats I’m most passionate about. Whether it was keeping up with rapidly changing regulations during the pandemic, profiling incredible teachers in the community, tracking the tax impacts of district budgets or reporting on school safety, I saw firsthand how education touches our lives every day — whether we have kids in school or not.
I know Ann has left some big shoes to fill, but I can’t wait to get started. And things will really heat up tonight. I’ll be covering my first Charlotte-Mecklenburg School Board meeting, where we’re expecting a big vote on phase one of the new student assignments.
Stay tuned.
And in the meantime, got a tip? Something I should know? Just want to say hi? Email me anytime at jfarrell@wfae.org.
