ST. CLOUD, Fla. — A Florida daycare's lesson about Rosa Parks led to a photograph that alarmed one Black girl's parents and launched a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) investigation.
Photos taken by the Building Brains Academy in St. Cloud reportedly showed the 2-year-old girl with her hands being held behind her back by a classmate wearing a police vest as she was 'fingerprinted' with finger paint, during a reenactment of the arrest and booking of Rosa Parks.
The girl's father told WESH that he kept reliving the look on his daughter's face in those pictures. He and the girl's mother said they pulled their daughter out of the daycare immediately.
"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," the girl's mother told NBC.
The parents called the school on the day of the incident, but they said they received no formal apology or meaningful actions taken.
Sandi Poreda, a spokesperson for Building Brains denied this, saying in a written statement that they had offered "deep and sincere regrets" to the family both during the phone call and multiple times afterward.
"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," Poreda reportedly said in the statement. "We teach these lessons not to celebrate the wrongdoings of others in the past, but to encourage our children to prevent such actions in the future."
Poreda also claimed that the reenactment was "spontaneous and unplanned" and "in the spirit of the moment" as the students were learning about Parks' legacy.
"In light of the situation, we have advised all of our faculty that any deviations from the approved curriculum, no matter how slight or unplanned, must first be approved by school administration," Poreda said.
The girl's parents contacted the NAACP very shortly after seeing the photos. The NAACP subsequently contacted Building Brains.
"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.
The incident is still reportedly under investigation. The NAACP said it had contacted Florida's Department of Children and Families regarding the case.
