Former Teacher Accused of Having Unlawful Sexual Relations with Student

A former Kansas high school art teacher accused of grooming and having unlawful sexual relations with an underaged student will stand trial on four criminal counts, a judge determined this week.

Nicole Hernandez, 30, appeared in court on Tuesday, December 2, after being charged with four counts of unlawful sexual relations with a student, KAKE.com reported.

Hernandez, who also goes by the name “Nikki Baird,” was arrested back on May 22, but made her first appearance in court last month, according to the Wichita Eagle.

She no longer teaches art at Wichita North High School, where the victim — a 17-year-old boy — was a student.

Wichita police started looking into Hernandez after receiving a tip on May 19 about a specific Instagram post that claimed the married teacher had had an “inappropriate relationship” with a former Wichita school district student.

The Eagle, citing an affidavit in the case, reports the school was made aware of Hernandez’s alleged behavior during the 2023-2024 school year, and that the matter was handled internally. The affidavit does not include information regarding the outcome of that probe.

Administrators approached Hernandez in May after learning she was being investigated, and she allegedly “admitted … that she got too close” with the student “and crossed boundaries,” according to the Eagle.

She initially claimed she had an emotional relationship with the boy that began after he’d graduated high school. But the dates for each of the four offenses she’s charged preceded the student’s graduation, the paper reported.

She also claimed things with the teen never got physical.

But the student, who is now an adult, told investigators otherwise. She groomed him throughout his sophomore, junior and senior years of high school, he claimed. “He described how she befriended him, then isolated him from others,” the affidavit read, according to the Eagle.

She then started “touching or rubbing his back or shoulders” and would soon start requesting hugs from him. The student claimed he spent a lot of alone time with the teacher, and that they began texting one another. Hernandez “messaged him about how her marriage was struggling,” read the affidavit. A letter she allegedly wrote to him “said, ‘I hope and pray one day I get the chance to be with you’ and ‘I know that I love you.’”

When he was a senior, and the two were spending time together at a local arts center, she allegedly grabbed his hand and held it. Back at school, Hernandez allegedly kissed the boy’s neck during one of their hugs.

Hernandez later arranged for them to meet up after school, and “kept asking him if he wanted her to kiss him,” it is alleged in the affidavit, the Eagle reported. “He said he was nervous and eventually said, ‘yes.’” Hernandez allegedly told the boy to keep the interaction a secret.

The touching continued and got more intimate. Then, the week before he graduated, Hernandez asked the boy into her office, where she told him to touch her body. Hours after his graduation ceremony, Hernandez arranged to meet the student in a random neighborhood, and the boy “felt pressured” to have sex with her in the back seat of her Jeep.

Hernandez allegedly told the teen victim that what they were doing was legal, given he had graduated. The sexual assaults then continued for weeks after, and Hernandez started sending the boy nude photos of herself, the Eagle reported.

In time, the teen cut off communication with the educator after realizing “the relationship he had with [her] was inappropriate and he had been manipulated by [Hernandez],” according to the affidavit.

The Eagle reported that cops claimed she visited the teen at his workplace and even left candy on his car while it was parked in his driveway. That spooked the teen, who told his parents, and later shared the nude photos with investigators, according to the affidavit.

Hernandez was released from jail on $50,000 bond and is set to return to court on July 28. Attempts to reach her lawyer for comment were unsuccessful Friday.

If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).