Jessica Bakeman
Jessica Bakeman reports on K-12 and higher education for WLRN, south Florida's NPR affiliate. While new to Miami and public radio, Jessica is a seasoned journalist who has covered education policymaking and politics in three state capitals: Jackson, Miss.; Albany, N.Y.; and, most recently, Tallahassee.
Jessica first moved to the Sunshine State in 2015 to help launch POLITICO Florida as part of the company’s national expansion. She is the immediate past president of the Capitol Press Club of Florida, a nonprofit organization that raises money for college scholarships benefiting journalism students.
Jessica was an original member of POLITICO New York’s Albany bureau. Also in the Empire State, Jessica covered politics for The Wall Street Journal and USA Today. As part of Gannett’s three-person Albany bureau, she won the New York Publishers Association award for distinguished state government coverage in 2013 and 2014. Jessica twice chaired a planning committee for the Albany press corps’ annual political satire show, the oldest of its kind in the country.
She started her career at The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson. There she won the Louisiana/Mississippi Associated Press Managing Editors’ 2013 first place award for continuing coverage of former Gov. Haley Barbour’s decision to pardon more than 200 felons as he left office.
She earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism and English literature from SUNY Plattsburgh, a public liberal arts college in northeastern New York. She (proudly) hails from Rochester, N.Y.
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At Tradewinds Middle School in Greenacres, the spindly leaves of endangered native Florida orchids peek out from where the baby plants are carefully... -
On a school night, Nicolas Ayala's curfew is usually 9:30 or 10 p.m. "But on Halloween, it's different," he said. Ayala, 17, is a junior at Ronald... -
A recently published Florida International University study found that weighted vests and stability balls are not effective in helping elementary-aged... -
A team of researchers at Florida International University and two other colleges is hoping to find out what barriers are keeping Latino transgender... -
New state policies born out of the Parkland school shooting have drawn the scrutiny of two national nonprofit research organizations, which have argued... -
The Miami-Dade County Public Schools police force has investigated two dozen threats against schools and arrested six people in connection with those... -
Florida would boast the second-highest starting salaries for teachers in the country under a new plan from Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. DeSantis wants... -
A national education reform advocacy group that released a report last week arguing Florida’s urban school districts spend less on schools with a... -
UPDATED: Education Reform Now has acknowledged its report was inaccurate and has reissued the report with an apology. Read more here . South Florida... -
The Miami-Dade County School Board has filed a federal lawsuit against more than a dozen corporations that manufacture or distribute opioids, claiming...
