Stories we loved to tell: Pulling a thread from a spreadsheet

In this year-end series, Nunatsiaq News staff look back on their most memorable stories from 2023.

It was about a year ago that Nunatsiaq News started hearing rumblings that all was not well at Sanirajak’s school.

A tipster emailed us to say Arnaqjuaq School’s sprinkler system had been broken for months while the maintenance crew waited for parts. In the meantime, the school board had already poured more than $120,000 into organizing a 24-hour fire watch.

Not long after, reporter Madalyn Howitt spoke to Amittuq MLA Joelie Kaernerk about how the sprinkler problem was just the tip of the iceberg.

He described broken water fountains, overcrowding, a makeshift classroom in Arnaqjuaq School’s kitchen, and flooding at the school.

Kaernerk said at the time he felt as though the government had “turned its back” on the community and the school’s need for an expansion — or at least extensive repairs.

As an editor, I worked closely with Madalyn on this story. As we discussed it and Nunavut’s well-known infrastructure problems generally, it became clear to us it wouldn’t be a big leap to assume this problem isn’t limited to Sanirajak.

So Madalyn submitted a request under Nunavut’s access to information law for documents that pertain to the state of Nunavut’s schools.

What she got was a massive spreadsheet with thousands of work-order entries for all the schools across the territory, going back one year.

What a bounty!

The problem was, the spreadsheet listed the work orders by date — not by community — and requests for snow removal (boring!) appeared alongside more alarming entries like one that described a student who nearly severed their finger when it got caught in a broken door.

It took hours of work, but together Madalyn and I wrestled the data into submission.

By creating a new spreadsheet for each community and individually pasting the work orders into their corresponding communities, a picture began to emerge.

There was not just one story in all of this data; there were three of them.

Madalyn’s first story, ‘Major safety concern’: Nunavut’s aging schools spur thousands of maintenance requests, laid out the problem — the territory’s schools are plagued by dozens of issues ranging from security concerns to broken doors that have injured and sometimes trapped students.

Her second story investigated how these problems actually affect the quality of education Nunavut students receive.

Under the headline When schools have to close: Fuel leaks, sewage floods push Nunavut students out, the story shows how often schools have had to close because of maintenance issues and the challenges educators face working in these conditions.

But Madalyn’s reporting didn’t stop there. It’s one thing to lay out what’s going wrong in the territory; it’s another to talk to the North’s brightest minds when it comes to what it would take to fix the problem. Her third story, Experts say homegrown talent key to school longevity, did just that.

Madalyn’s reporting earned great feedback from readers, thanking her for shedding light on a complicated problem with nuance and sensitivity.

She also got criticism — from a local leader in Igloolik who wanted to know why Ataguttaaluk school in that community wasn’t included in the series.

So while Madalyn was in Igloolik this year, she looked into it and wrote about the problems plaguing one of Nunavut’s oldest schools, which is more than a generation past its expected lifespan.

As an editor and somebody who helps oversee what we publish at Nunatsiaq News, I am proud of this series. I’m also proud, not only of Madalyn’s ability to organize pages and pages of information, data and interviews into great journalism, but her enthusiasm for it.

It’s the time of year where we tend to reflect on what we’ve accomplished and what we want to see as we move into 2024.

Personally, I want to do what I can to make sure our readers see as many stories of this calibre in Nunatsiaq News as possible. They take more time and they take more effort, but I think they are worth it.