The parents of four Black high school students in New York have filed a lawsuit against a school district after a teacher reportedly presented a slideshow which compared the teens to a gorilla.

According to ABC 7, a Longwood High School zoology teacher in Suffolk County took the photo during recent a field trip to the zoo, asking his students to pose with their hands on each other's heads. When he later presented the slideshow in his zoology class, the teacher reportedly showed the gorilla after the picture of the teens and included a caption saying "Monkey Do."

“I didn’t know that they were going to put in that perspective and show us, compare us to monkeys,” Longwood High School junior Gykye Murray told the Philadelphia Tribune.

Senior Khevin Beaubrun said he posted a video of the slideshow on social media to show what happened in class, but the teacher and school administrators pressured him to take it down.

“I said they had used us like slaves,” Beaubrun told the newspaper. “I posted it on Snapchat, social media, and he asked me to take it down.”

The parents are looking for $12 million in damages, in addition to asking the New York State Department of Education to suspend or fire the teachers involved, News 12 reported.

“My temperature went up. Hair on the back of my neck stood up," one of the grandparents of the students told The Tribune. "I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? This is an educator?'"

The district released a statement, saying the picture was an unfortunate lapse of judgment.

"The photo was taken without fully understanding the sensitivity or the hurt it may have caused and reminds us that we must be more aware of the feelings of our multi-cultural population," the district told ABC 7.

Administrators also said the school has been having the zoo field trip for more than a decade and students of all races have taken similar photos for a slideshow with a “monkey see” caption.

The parents said the same teacher presented another offensive slideshow last year when he showed three Black female students and a lion with the caption, "Not all animals are cute."

Attorney John Ray said there is no question about the teacher's intentions.

“Remember, this is a zoology class, evolution is taught,” he told the Tribune. "This is institutionalized racial superiority.”