Jessie Spano

Dr. Jessica Myrtle "Jessie" Spano is the current guidance counselor at Bayside High, the school she attended as a teen. Previously, during her time at Bayside, she was best friends with Zack, Screech, Lisa, and Kelly; she was, and arguably still is, the smartest person in the group.

Jessie's position at Bayside, the school in which her son Jamie attends, often puts Jessie in a complex position wherein she must chose between doing the right thing and helping her son navigate teenage life.

Early life
She and Zack live next door to each other, and Zack regularly visits Jessie by climbing through her window. She lives with her mother, who remarried in the third season, providing Jessie with a stepbrother, Eric from New York City, seen in only two episodes. Jessie's father is the owner and manager of the Marriott Desert Sands resort. He is also remarried, to a much younger woman with whom Jessie did not initially get along and was against marrying. She eventually accepted Leslie.

Season 2
Jessie cracks under the pressure of getting a bad grade in geometry, worried that it will have a massive impact on her chance at making it to Stanford. She starts taking caffeine pills in order to stay awake to study for midterms, to get in more studying. Ignoring Slater's warning, she continues to take them. One morning, Zack goes round to Jessie's house to wake her up, when she has a breakdown. Zack didn't believe Slater when he warned him about Jessie.

Season 3
It is discovered Jessie's parents are divorced and both are remarried during Season 3. Her mother's remarriage introduces a conniving stepbrother from New York named Eric (played by Joshua Hoffman) in a 2-part episode, although neither her mother nor stepfather are seen, however. In another 2-part episode, her father marries a much younger aerobics instructor named Leslie, whom Jessie initially disfavours.

Season 4
Jessie fully expected to be crowned valedictorian, but finished a fraction of a point behind Screech. Angered over having to accept the salutation position, she swore to make him miserable in order to make him give back the position to her. However, Lisa comes to Screech's defence and wisely calls Jessie out for being selfish. She pointed out being valedictorian means a lot to him and she saw first hand how caring he was in helping Zack come up with a ballet performance to help him get the missing credits. Lisa also mentions that Screech only gave up the position of valedictorian because he knew how much it meant to her as well and didn't want to hurt her feelings by fighting over it. Only then, Jessie regretted how much she hurt his feelings and realizes how much being valedictorian means to him. She does the right thing and gives it back to Screech.

Upon graduation, Jessie attends Columbia University, although she had been hoping to get into Stansbury (fictional) in one episode, and had applied to several Ivy League schools.

College
Jessie attends Columbia University although she long expressed a desire to attend Stanford University and likewise displayed interest in the fictional Stansbury College, as well as various other elite universities. When Jesse graduated college Jessie earns her PhD in Educational Psychology.

Month in Vegas
She spent a few months in Vegas after college.

Saved by the Bell (2020)
Sometime in the fall of 2004 her son Jamie Spano was born. Sometime after she became a mother she becomes a best-selling author for Parenting books.

Position at Bayside
Jessie is comfortable in her position as Guidance Councilor at Bayside High, but finds that this comes with numerous difficulties. Jessie finds it difficult to see her son, Jamie, replaced as quarterback of the Bayside Tigers, and confronts Slater about the issue. Slater tells Jessie that he only allowed Jamie on the team due to the friendship between the two, much to Jessie's surprise. Jessie, however, has trouble explaining to Jamie that he is bad at football, and instead sugar coats the situation, remarking that he should embrace Aisha's new position on the team.

Later, Jessie advocates for the staff members at Bayside supporting the student led walkout in favor of the Douglas students remaining at Bayside. She convinces A.C. Slater, Ronald Toddman and the remainder of the faculty staff at Bayside to join her when the students walk out.

Return to School and Tribute to Screech
On the first day back at school after the pandemic, Jessie checked in with Slater, asking how he was doing. Jessie herself had spent the pandemic trapped in a house with a man she was divorcing. She was also still working with a therapist, trying to figure out how to tell Jamie they were splitting up. Slater said he could never do therapy, that exercising was his therapy. She said that was fine as long as she wasn't using that to avoid feeling his feelings. At the school assembly for the day, Jessie told the students she was extending her office hours for anyone who needed help transitioning back to school.

At the end of the day, Slater decided to go to the meetup at The Max with Jessie. Before they went, they did ten pushups together, which Slater said helped him. At the meetup, they toasted to Screech, who had recently died, with the new menu item: Screech's spaghetti burgers.

Telling Jamie
When Jessie learned Toddman had cancelled football, she went to his office to convince him not to, because she wanted to tell Jamie about the divorce, but didn't want to do it when something else sad had happened to him. She had an airtight plan for telling him, which involved predicting what he would say because she knew him so well. However, she then found out that Jamie wasn't upset that football was cancelled as he'd wanted to quit for a while because he realized he wasn't very good at it. Jessie began to panic that she didn't know Jamie as well as she thought she did.

Jessie went home and wrote 1000 possible scripts to try to plan for every reaction Jamie might have. When she told Toddman about them, he said there were some things they couldn't plan for. She just wanted to do better than her parents did when they told her. Toddman said her mom might have been doing the best she could.

After school, Jessie took Jamie to a park he'd loved to play at. She started to tell him, but he had already figured it out. He asked what would happen next and she said she didn't know and started crying. He said it was okay because he knew she was doing her best. Jessie then took Jamie out to get popcorn chicken.

Day Out
Jessie arrived at work today and Slater noticed that she seemed down. He suggested they skip work for the day and go to something. Remembering that she never took a skip day in high school, Jessie agreed to go. They went to a restaurant on the beach and Jessie was horrified to see that they were still using styrofoam cups. She confronted the server about it and he went to the owner, his father, threatening to quit if they didn't switch to a sustainable alternative. After this, Jessie realized Slater had brought her to that place because he knew about the cups.

The next day, Jessie thanked Slater for their day out and said it awakened something in her. He agreed, but was surprised when she said she'd made a list of restaurants still using styrofoam cups and was going to drive to each one and get them to stop. She asked what it awakened in Slater and he lied and said the beach reminded him how much he hates seagulls.

Supporting Lexi
When a trans girl at another school faced kicked off the soccer team due to other kids' parents suing, several students and teachers started reaching out to Lexi in an attempt to support her. Lexi became overwhelmed by this and went to Jessie. She told Jessie was fine until Chloe started making her feel guilty for not joining a protest about it. Jessie told her that no one could tell her how or when to take a stand and she'd find her own way to fight back. Even small things could make a difference. Lexi took that to mean that something huge could solve everything.

Getting Back Out There
On the day of the Bayside High career fair, Jessie started talking to Lisa and Kelly about her divorce. They decided she needed to put herself back out there and break the seal on dating again. When a firefighter from another booth sent her a drink, Lisa and Kelly dressed her up and sent her over to flirt with him. However, when she got there, she ended up breaking his nose while trying to dance on the fire pole, so they whisked her way. After the fair was over, the whole group went back to Jessie's for a party.

Aisha's Language Class
When Jessie learned that Aisha's language requirement was being filled by Nintendo Studies, which Slater had approved due to her position on the football team, she told Aisha she'd have to switch to an actual language class.

Encouraging Kelly
While Kelly and Jessie were having lunch in Jessie's office, Jessie asked if Kelly had figured out how to tell Zack about her decision to take the MCATs. Kelly said she wasn't doing that anymore because when she went to register, the site was down for maintenance, so she took it as a sign from the universe, something she'd done for every major decision she'd made in her life. Jessie told her that those things weren't fate, causing Kelly to rethink every decision she'd ever made. Jessie had Slater pretend to choke in order to get Kelly to believe in fate again, but Kelly immediately saw through it and confronted Jessie. Jessie then decided she'd just make the decision for Kelly and told her she wasn't going to medical school. Kelly immediately objected that she wanted to do it and then realized she'd made her decision. Then Daisy came in to ask for Gil's locker combination to get something out of there. Kelly realized Gil had the same locker she'd had in high school and gave Daisy the combination. This restored her faith in magic.

Pranking Krampus and Dance Contest
When they learned that Gil was a spy from Valley and had deleted all their volunteer hours, Jessie, Slater, and Toddman talked to the Valley principal, Pat Krampus, and asked her to talk to the spirit board about having their hours restored. She refused, saying that Gil was registered as a Bayside student, so everything he did was within the rules. Because of this, Jessie and Slater decided to go to Valley and prank her.

At Valley, they slipped into Krampus's office while she was out. Jessie moved all her appointments back half an hour so she'd be late to everything while Slater left a trick pen on her desk. When they heard her coming back, they had to hide in the vents. They watched and listened as she discovered that her calendar was messed up and fixed it. However, she then got ink on her shirt from the pen, forcing her to change her shirt. While she was changing, the superintendent came in, followed by his wife, who saw Krampus without her shirt and immediately accused them of having an affair and left. Once his wife was gone, the superintendent was angry with Krampus for forcing his hand and told her it was over between them.

Slater and Jessie then went back to Bayside, where the dance context was underway. They danced together and agreed they might not have been so bad together in high school. Jessie became uncomfortable with the conversation and walked away. However, after talking to Daisy about how love can make you feel stupid, she went to Slater and kissed him.

Spirit Competition
Slater pulled back from the kiss to asked if it was a bad idea. She asked who cared, but he said he was trying to be more thoughtful about things and wanted to think more about it. Jessie said she didn't want to think about it and left.

Jessie went to Kelly, who was studying for her MCATs, and told her what had happened. Kelly was excited, though Jessie's excitement was tempered by Slater's rejection. They agreed that Jessie needed to go to Slater and tell him he was wrong.

Jessie confronted Slater, saying she was a catch and if anyone was a bad idea, it was him. He clarified that he didn't think she was a bad idea, but maybe they were together. He had a habit of jumping into things without thinking and didn't ant to do that anymore, something she had told him to do. He said he didn't want them to start something they would regret later.

After the Spirit Competition ended with Bayside winning, Jessie found Slater in the parking lot. Each of them said they weren't going to The Max to celebrate because they thought the other would be there. Jessie said she didn't want things to be awkward between them. He was right that it was a bad idea, but he asked who cared and stepped forward to kiss her.

Personality
Jessie is portrayed as a liberal, though she did have some controversial opinions (such as supporting Saddam Hussein's gassing of the Kurds). She is a second-wave feminist. She is often the first to speak up when she feels something is unjust. Although seen as intelligent, Jessie has a somewhat neurotic streak.

A.C. Slater
Slater & Jessie

Season 1
TBA

Season 2
TBA

Season 3
TBA

Season 4
TBA

Season 1

 * Pilot
 * Clubs and Cliques
 * The Bayside Triangle
 * The Fabulous Birchwood Boys
 * Rent-A-Mom
 * Teen-Line
 * House Party
 * The Todd Capsule
 * All in the Hall
 * Showdown

Season 2
TBA

Notes and Trivia

 * She is a feminist.
 * Her son Jamie has the same last name as her probably because she kept her maiden name.
 * She is a best-selling author.
 * She got her PhD in Educational Psychology.