The NAACP is demanding that the Florida Department of Children and Families looks into a disturbing incident at an Osceola County day care, during which a Black student was handcuffed while learning about Rosa Parks.
According to Fox 35 Orlando, a 2-year-old Black student at the Building Brains Academy became “subject to an alarming act of simulation, where she was handcuffed and fingerprinted by a white peer.” Fox 35 spoke with the toddler’s parents about the incident. Though they chose to remain anonymous, they did share that they learned of the incident via the school’s app and it upset them.
“Her hands restrained behind her back as if she was being taken into custody,” the parents told Fox 35. “Then the next image was her hands being placed on a table as if she was being booked, and the look on her face alone, it was horrific.”
Building Brains Academy issued a statement about the incident, and argued that “the photographs shared do not offer a complete or accurate representation of the full lesson about the importance of equal rights,” Fox 35 reported.
“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,” the day care’s statement continued. “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. We deeply regret the assumption that our teachers, our leadership, or our administration would in any way choose to make a child feel uncomfortable or negatively singled out.”
The school explained that “one of the classes in our multicultural school was learning about the legacy of Rosa Parks and the importance of treating each other with respect and equality. In the spirit of the moment, the class spontaneously decided to act out the elements of Ms. Parks’ story, including her arrest for refusing to give up her seat at the front of the bus.”
The toddler’s parents aren’t buying it.
“There’s so many ways to teach the Rosa Parks story,” they told Fox 35.
The NAACP isn’t buying it either. It sent a letter to the Florida Department of Children and Families asking for the “immediate cessation of such activities within the curriculum at Building Brains Academy.”
The letter also stated that the organization will be “exploring all legal avenues to address this grave matter and ensure such incidents are not repeated.”
The parents told Fox 35 that they pulled their daughter from the day care, and she’s never been happier.
“As we were approaching the school where the incident happened, she got very quiet and very, very reserved. But then we passed it, we had our daughter back. She was bubbly,” they said.
