VESTAVIA HILLS, Ala. — Principal Lauren Dressback didn’t think about it after it happened. After all, she was workplace-close with Wesley Smith, the custodian at Cahaba Heights Elementary School, in this affluent suburb of Birmingham. She called him “the mayor.” She said that he knew her two children, asked about her family almost daily and […]
Laura Pappano
Laura Pappano is an education journalist who also writes about gender and sport. A former education columnist for The Boston Globe, she has been a regular contributor to The New York Times education section and The Hechinger Report. Her stories have also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Boston Globe Magazine, The Washington Post, and other publications. Pappano is founder of the New Haven Student Journalism Project, which helps students in grades 3-8 produce a real newspaper in print and online, and is writer-in-residence at the Wellesley Centers for Women. She has a bachelor’s degree from Yale. Laura's most recent book is School Moms: Parent Activism, Partisan Politics and the Battle for Public Education, which was published by Beacon Press in January 2024.
