About Erika Hobbs

HOBBS, ERIKA is an education reporter at The Orlando Sentinel. She covers the Orange County public education system, which is the country's 11th largest school district. Her responsibilities include spot-news coverage, in-depth projects and trendspotting. She also blogs for School Zone, the Sentinel's education blog, and Inside Evans High, a blog for a project on one of the county's failing urban schools. Hobbs is an Illinois native, and graduated from Columbia College in Chicago with a journalism degree. She also received a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Hobbs has freelanced for The Sun in Baltimore, and worked for The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Center for Public Integrity in Washington, DC, where she was part of a team that won a 2003 IRE award for investigative journalism.