Bianca Vázquez Toness spoke to NPF Future of the American Child fellows in Charlotte, NC, January 30, 2024: “What’s Keeping Students Out of Classrooms?”

Bianca Vázquez Toness has investigated the impact of the pandemic on young people and their education since the pandemic shuttered schools nearly four years ago. At the Associated Press, she has spent the last year writing about the students who’ve gone missing from school because of the public health crisis. Toness has worked at the Boston Globe, Bloomberg News and at NPR stations in Boston. She got her start in journalism writing about Mexico for English-speaking readers.