A preschool in Florida is facing backlash from the NAACP and the parents of a 2-year-old Black girl, who they allege was made to participate in a “racially unethical” Rosa Parks role-play.
The incident happened on Dec. 1, when a class of 2- and 3-year-old children were learning about Parks, the civil rights activist, said a spokesperson at Building Brains Academy, a minority-owned and operated preschool in Osceola, Florida. The girl, who the NAACP alleged was the only Black student in the class, played Parks during a re-enactment of her 1955 arrest for refusing to give up her seat at the front of a segregated bus.
Photos of the re-enactment shown to NBC News by the NAACP show the girl’s peer pretending to “fingerprint” her with paint and holding her hands behind her back. The photos were shared with the class’ parents.
The girl’s parents pulled her out of the school within 30 minutes of seeing the images, telling NBC News that they were horrified.
“Rosa Parks was a woman that we would teach our daughter to look up to, but now our memory is stained. This is something we’ll have to grow around and see how we can tell her this story differently,” said the girl’s mother, who asked not to be named.
The girl’s parents last communicated with the school in a phone call on Dec. 1, when, they said, there was no formal apology for what happened or a response that would result in “any type of impact or change.”
A spokesperson for the school denied that it had initially refused to apologize.
The girl’s parents said they reached out to the NAACP, sharing the photos of the incident.
“We consider the activity an inappropriate trivialization of a significant historical event, insensitive to the struggles against segregation, and psychologically harmful to all students involved, especially Black students reenacting such a traumatic moment in American history,” the NAACP wrote in a letter to the school.
In a news release, the NAACP alleged that the girl was handcuffed and fingerprinted by a white peer. But the preschool’s spokesperson, Sandi Poreda, said that the peer was not white, and that no restraints of any kind were actually used.
“The photos of the class activity do not offer a complete or accurate representation of the full lesson about the importance of equal rights,” Paola Rosado, the preschool’s owner and founder, wrote in a letter responding to the NAACP. “Our school believes in and teaches the importance of equality, of standing up for our rights, and of speaking up when we see something isn’t right.”
But the NAACP maintained that regardless of whether physical handcuffs were used, the “emotional trauma” resulting from the role-play incident is “egregious.”
The role-play was spontaneously planned by the teacher and is not a part of the school’s regular curriculum, Rosado said. Building Brains Academy claimed that it apologized to parents at the school for the incident and communicated its regrets to the NAACP.
But a spokesperson for the NAACP Center for Education Innovation and Research said they are still seeking a more explicit apology for the incident.
Building Brains Academy now requires its faculty to get any deviations from the approved curriculum approved by the school administration to avoid similar incidents, Rosado said.
“We will continue ensuring our students are exposed to a curriculum that celebrates equality and diversity, and we welcome any recommendations from the NAACP on curriculum to consider for inclusion,” said Rosado.
A spokesperson for the academy said the teacher had apologized and now understands why the incident should not have happened.
The NAACP Florida State Conference and the NAACP Center for Education Innovation and Research said in a joint press release that the incident reflects a “broader issue of mishandling and suppressing Black history education in Florida.”