Lesley Cosme Torres
Education ReporterLesley Cosme Torres is an Education Reporter at Connecticut Public. She reports on education inequities across the state and also focuses on Connecticut's Hispanic and Latino residents, with a particular focus on the Puerto Rican community. Her coverage spans from LGBTQ+ discrimination in K-12 schools, book ban attempts across CT, student mental health concerns, and more. She reports out of Fairfield county and Hartford.
Prior to her current position, Lesley was a Spanish misinformation reporter for the Miami Herald where she focused on misinformation targeting Latino communities.
She received her master's degree in journalism from UC Berkeley with an emphasis on investigative reporting and covering Latino communities in the U.S. Lesley earned her undergraduate degree at Penn State University where she was a reporter for the Centre Daily Times and the Daily Collegian.
Her reporting has appeared on NPR's All Things Considered, WLRN, and KQED.
Lesley can be reached at ltorres@ctpublic.org.
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Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz engaged with curious fifth graders at Mauro-Sheridan Interdistrict Magnet School Tuesday about why Latinos are such an important group in Connecticut. -
CDC Director Dr. Mandy Cohen visited the Fair Haven Community Health Care Center in New Haven Thursday to emphasize the need for Connecticut residents to get vaccines. -
Lt. Gov. Bysiewicz said most of the bans are initiated by parents and groups with religious and political affiliations. Most of the challenged books, she says, include LGBTQ+ issues or have people of color as their main characters. -
Randi Weingarten toured Wilbur Cross High School to highlight the work educators are doing in public schools across the state. -
Victoria Lee Thomas, chair of the education committee of the NAACP in Hartford, said she’s disappointed, but not surprised that the superintendent didn’t address the situation at a recent board meeting. -
The district has to start its plan to integrate the schools from scratch. Gary Highsmith, superintendent of Hamden Public Schools said the plan would’ve required more effort on the Black and Brown families than it would’ve for the white families. -
Santiago said there will be generations of people who will be traumatized by what they experienced and she wanted to write the novel "Las Madres" for them. -
CT is among the wealthiest states in U.S., but teachers still rely on donations for their classroomsA survey done by the U.S. Department of Education shows that over 90% of teachers have to reach into their own pocket to supply their classrooms. -
During a Board of Education meeting, West Hartford Board of Education chair Lorna Thomas-Farquharson read a statement which stated that the board had been made aware of “an allegation of a racial slur uttered in the presence of students.” -
Paso a Paso, un programa de las Escuelas Públicas de Hartford que recluta maestros de Puerto Rico, comenzó hace tres años. Dos maestros de la isla comenzarán a trabajar en las escuelas del distrito en el otoño.
