Megan Valley covers education for the Belleville News-Democrat in Belleville, Ill. She covered K-12 and higher education for the Quad-City Times in Davenport, Iowa for a year and a half. A 2018 graduate of the University of Notre Dame, she double-majored in English and the Program of Liberal Studies, and worked for The Observer, the student paper, first as a news writer and eventually as assistant managing editor. She was an intern at Ave Maria Press, a Catholic publisher, in Notre Dame and wrote on music for Exclaim!, a monthly Canadian music magazine. The summer after graduating, Valley attended New York University’s Summer Publishing Institute. She grew up in Flushing, Michigan, a suburb of Flint.
Beat: K-12 education in Belleville
Madison and St. Clair counties alone include 40 public districts and dozens of private schools. About 120,000 children live there. These school systems also control millions in tax dollars, yet get only surface coverage. This beat reporter reports on the performance of schools and public officials to help improve the quality of education for thousands of students.