From the moment the Houston Landing launched last summer, this much has been clear: our region cares about education.

Hundreds of thousands of readers have visited our site over the last 16 months, diving into our stories about the tumultuous state takeover of Houston ISD, difficult cuts to campuses throughout the area and the troubling shortage of high-quality teachers. You’ve spent countless hours with our articles, often using them to shape your opinions and advocate for your children.

Now, we’re making a commitment to you.

Starting today, Houston Landing is formally expanding and reshaping our education coverage, with the goal of delivering deeper reporting that helps students, families and community leaders navigate our complicated education landscape.

We plan to accomplish this in four ways: 

• Deploying a team of four talented reporters — up from two — and adding a new audience engagement producer dedicated to creating more education content for social media and ensuring more readers see our work.

• Centering our coverage on five school districts (Houston, Alief, Aldine, Pasadena and Spring ISDs) and our region’s three largest community colleges (Houston Community College, Lone Star College and San Jacinto College).

• Delivering more reporting on issues directly impacting children and community college students, such as access to early childhood education, literacy and math instruction and preparation for life after high school.

• Producing more stories, including three weekly features that begin publishing this week, and a weekly newsletter, The Homeroom, that debuts Thursday. (To sign up for The Homeroom, click here.)

Our team is committed to shining a light on these enormously important communities and issues. We also aim to connect readers with proven solutions that benefit their families and neighbors.

Here’s how we plan to make good on that promise.

What’s new

Beginning today, you will see coverage focused on new areas, as well as a few new products.

First and foremost, we have chosen to narrow our coverage area to five priority districts and three priority community colleges. This is a new approach for the Landing — and it’s one that few news organizations have tried. We made this decision for a few reasons:

• With the exception of Houston ISD, these districts and colleges receive relatively minimal news coverage. When they do, it tends to involve coverage of school board meetings, campus crime or misbehaving teachers. A core part of the Landing’s mission is to serve historically underserved communities, which means aligning our beats with those communities and giving them more in-depth coverage.

• Our five priority districts and three priority colleges also enroll large numbers of Black and Latino students from lower-income backgrounds. These students, on average, have had less academic success than white, Asian and higher-income students. They often get treated differently and have less access to resources in school. We believe our coverage can highlight these inequities and help the region chart a path toward a more equitable society.
• The eight-county Greater Houston region, home to nearly 1.7 million students spread across more than 100 districts and institutions, is just too big for a seven-person team to cover well. We would rather cover several districts and colleges really well than spread ourselves too thin trying to cover everyone. We know this comes at the expense of many communities, particularly in Houston’s outlying suburbs, but it’s a difficult choice we feel is necessary. 

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Beyond our strategy, we will start rolling out four new features this week:

• The Homeroom, a weekly education newsletter published Thursdays. Each issue will provide a deeper look into our work, offering analysis and behind-the-scenes insight on our biggest education story of the week. It’s also a spot to find all of the Landing’s education content from the prior week, a rundown of upcoming education events and a featured education story from across Texas.

• Answer Key, a weekly article published Mondays that addresses an important question on the minds of students and families. Check out our first edition here.

• Learning Curve, a weekly article published Wednesdays that aims to provide you data about schools and colleges in an easy-to-use, clear format.

• Pop Quiz, a weekly article published Fridays that features question-and-answer interviews with education newsmakers — including students, educators and advocates.

What’s to come

Our education team has an ambitious plan for better serving our communities, but it’s going to take some time to execute. Here’s what we’ll be working on in the coming months.

• Developing deeper ties with our communities. We plan to spend more time building relationships with families, educators and local leaders in our priority communities. By narrowing down our coverage area and adding to our team, we can devote the resources needed to become a fixture of our communities.

• Spreading the word about the Landing and its work. Many people still don’t know about the Landing, particularly if they haven’t been served well by the media in the past. And that’s not their fault. It’s on us to tell people about our mission, show them our work and become a regular part of their community. We are developing plans for how to accomplish that, with an early focus on connecting through WhatsApp and Facebook groups.

• Producing more social media and video content. We know many Houstonians — and especially young Houstonians — are getting their news from Instagram, TikTok and other social media platforms. In particular, they’re watching lots of videos of those social networks. We are working to build up our ability to quickly produce interesting social media and video content that still offers important depth and nuance.

• Producing more Spanish-language content. Tens of thousands of families in our priority school districts and colleges primarily speak Spanish at home. We want our reporting to be more accessible for them. Currently, we translate some of our articles into Spanish but don’t post much on social media in Spanish. We plan to change that.

• Partnering with local news outlets and influencers. Houstonians already get lots of information from their neighborhood newsletter, favorite Instagram influencer, local network television station and major online news outlets. We want to share our work with them (free of charge) and collaborate on publishing to their existing audiences.

Our team

The Landing’s education team will feature one editor dedicated solely to education coverage, four reporters and one audience engagement editor. We also employ a data reporting fellow for the remainder of the year.

For full biographies, click on each staff member’s name below. You can also reach us at education@houstonlanding.org. 

• Jacob Carpenter — team leader. Jacob has led the Landing’s education coverage since its launch. He previously covered Houston ISD for the Houston Chronicle from 2017 to 2021. Reach him at jacob@houstonlanding.org.

• Miranda Dunlap — community college reporter. Miranda will move from the K-12 education beat, which she covered for a year, to reporting on Houston Community College, Lone Star College and San Jacinto College. Reach her at miranda@houstonlanding.org.
• Brooke Kushwaha — Aldine, Alief, Pasadena and Spring ISD reporter. Brooke, a Houston native, joined the Landing in September to cover four priority districts. Ella habla español. Reach her at brooke@houstonlanding.org.
• Asher Lehrer-Small — Houston ISD reporter. Asher, the Landing’s HISD beat reporter since July 2023, will continue in his position. Reach him at asher@houstonlanding.org.

• Angelica Perez — general assignment reporter. Angelica, who has been a civic engagement reporter for the Landing since April 2023, will take on multiple roles with the team. They include writing news articles, engaging with communities in our priority coverage areas and appearing on our social media platforms. Ella habla español. Reach her at angelica@houstonlanding.org.

• Fiza Kuzhiyil — audience engagement producer. Fiza, a League City native, joined the Landing in September. Her role focuses on connecting with communities we hope to reach, sharing our news stories with target audiences, producing social media content and overseeing our education newsletter. Reach her at fiza@houstonlanding.org.

• Michael Zhang — data reporting fellow. Michael, a senior at the University of Texas at Austin, will produce data-driven stories and visualizations. Reach him at michael.zhang@houstonlanding.org.

We hope you will join us along the way by reading, watching, subscribing, donating and spreading the word about the Landing’s education team. We care deeply about the education of students in Houston, and we know how much you care, too.

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