Investigative Reporting
Jen Sansbury / Waco Tribune-Herald

Jen Sansbury is a veteran education writer and she was tuned in from the moment the Texas State Board of Education created Waco's Emma L. Harrison Charter School.

"It was an independent school receiving public funds from the state, and primarily served students who fled the Waco school system," Sansbury said.

"The charter school started having financial problems within a few months of opening. Officials overestimated their enrollment, so the school received about twice as much money from the state as it should have. It spent the money left and right, mostly to improperly pay for improvements to the building, which the school did not own.

June 20, 1999

"I wrote about 100 stories and made more than 20 open records requests to something like seven different government agencies — local, state and federal."

The state acted after the Tribune-Herald's investigation, and Emma L. Harrison became the first operating charter school in Texas to be shut down by the state.

Sansbury also led the Tribune-Herald's 1999 Best of Cox award-winning expose of the Waco Independent School District's illegal committee meetings. She recently has departed Waco and joined the Metro staff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Sansbury graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1993 with a degree in journalism. She was a part-time editorial clerk for the Austin American-Statesman before serving for three years as the Waco Tribune-Herald's education writer.