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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The new $129 million Bassick High School will be located on the University of Bridgeport campus, overlooking Seaside Park. -
State Sen. Doug McCrory, Senate Chair of the Education Committee who represents Hartford, Bloomfield and Windsor, led the state Senate’s passage of the bill. It is now headed for a vote in the state House of Representatives. -
The tutoring program will provide academic support for students in the first through fifth grade whose literacy and math proficiency levels were stunted by the pandemic, due to loss of classroom instruction time. -
Starting in fall 2023, the university will cover medical costs for abortion after insurance. The school said in a statement it will also provide emergency contraceptives like Plan B and Ella for free. -
The rally and school sit-in took place after the state medical examiner revealed a Killingly High School student who died in a crash last week on I-395 in Plainfield, took her own life. -
Students and staff say the budget cuts, proposed by the state legislature, could lead to more than 650 full-time faculty and staff layoffs, the elimination of 3,000 part-time positions, and a tuition increase by thousands of dollars. -
Latino groups rallied at the state capitol in honor of the International Day of Labor to call on Gov. Ned Lamont and the state legislature to ensure a fair and humane immigration system. -
Stamford’s public school district is the first in the state to receive funding because it was the first to submit the application for the grant and was specific about the project plans. The state has also identified the city as a school district in need. -
State officials said they want the money to increase enrollment in the summer enrichment program by providing students scholarships and transportation. -
Immigrant youth, healthcare advocates, allies, and legislators gathered for a Student Day of Action demanding Connecticut legislators invest in the health and future of the state by funding an expansion of the HUSKY Health program for income eligible immigrants under 26 years of age.
