A Kansas teacher allegedly groomed a student for years before plying him with alcohol and having sex with him in her Jeep.
Nikki Baird, 30, faces four felony counts of having unlawful sexual relations with a student, the Wichita Eagle reported. Baird was an art teacher at North High School.
Before coming to North, Baird worked at Mayberry Cultural and Fine Arts Magnet Middle School, where she was named Teacher of the Month in January 2020.
The Wichita Eagle reported that concerns about Baird's closeness with a student were raised more than a year before she was arrested. The newspaper cited an arrest affidavit that stated concerns were first brought to school officials during the 2023-2024 school year.
Police began investigating on May 19, 2025, after they were directed to a social media post that referenced an inappropriate relationship between Baird and a former student.
According to the newspaper, the victim in the case said that Baird first became his art teacher in middle school. She became friends with the student and began grooming him in the sophomore year of high school.
"He described how she befriended him, then isolated him from others," the affidavit reads, according to the Wichita Eagle.
Eventually, Baird "messaged him about how her marriage was struggling," the newspaper reported. The teacher also wrote notes stating her feelings for the student. "One letter said, 'I hope and pray one day I get the chance to be with you' and 'I know that I love you,'" the affidavit read.
The report states that Baird escalated physical contact with the teenager, eventually pressuring him into sex in the back of her Jeep.
The Wichita Eagle reported that the teenager eventually stopped communicating with Baird because he "understood the relationship he had with Baird was inappropriate and he had been manipulated by Baird."
