For a while now, the North Raleigh News section has been without a schools reporter, as loyal readers well know. Hopefully, we have managed to fill the gap without our education coverage suffering.

We have managed to pull through with the help of readers, who have contributed guest columns for the School Days page. Another big helping hand came from Kinea White, whose name you may recognize because she has written several schools-related stories for the North Raleigh News. (She has one today on page 5N.)

I am happy to report that Kinea will be our new schools reporter.

She already works at The N&O -- not as a reporter but as a member of the newsroom support staff. In that position, she's responsible for a variety of tasks that help keep the newsroom running smoothly.

Somehow, in recent months, she also has managed to squeeze out a few stories for us -- as well as the police report we run each week.

Kinea, who is 24 years old, has proven herself capable of being our schools reporter.

I didn't choose Kinea at random to help us out while we were down a reporter. Before coming to The N&O, she covered education and town government for about two years as a reporter for The Daily News in Jacksonville, N.C., where she grew up.

Kinea had wanted for a long time to work at The N&0. In fact, she took the job on The N&O's support staff with the hope of eventually moving to a reporting position.

Kinea attended North Carolina Central University, from which she graduated in 2002. At NCCU, she majored in English, with a concentration in journalism. She wrote for the Campus Echo, the student newspaper.

Kinea is married, and she and her husband Kevin live in Durham. Please welcome me in joining her. She has not officially started work for us, so please don't contact her with ideas for stories just yet -- but we'd love to hear your ideas at NRNews@newsobserver.com.

Meanwhile, we still need a little help from our friends out there. We'll need another guest column or two, so if you have an idea, please contact me.