Florida principal ousted after 6th grade students view Michelangelo’s ‘David’ without parental consent

There’s a lot of contention about what is or isn’t appropriate for children to learn about in school. And that seems to ring most true for the state of Florida where a principal in Tallahassee is under fire for allowing students to view Michelangelo’s “David” without parental consent.

Parents complained that the principal of Tallahassee Classical School, Hope Carrasquilla, didn’t follow the usual protocol of sending out permission slips before showing the classical sculpture to the sixth grade students. Some parents called the 16th century sculpture, “pornographic,” according to HuffPost.

Carrasquilla was given the choice to resign or be fired by the board of the charter school. She has only held the position for less than a year. Carasquilla was the school’s third principal since it opened in 2020.

The now-former principal also spoke to HuffPost and reportedly said that the situation was “a little more complicated than that.” She pointed out that the school usually follows the practice of sending out a notice to parents before showing students classical work but that this time there were “a series of miscommunications.”

One parent was “point-blank upset,” Carrasquilla added, and “felt her child should not be viewing those pieces.”

Michelangelo’s marble sculpture of the Biblical figure David was crafted between 1501 and 1504 and now resides at the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence.

Carrasquilla also added that she’s been teaching in the classical education sphere for over a decade and knew that “once in a while you get a parent who gets upset about Renaissance art.” She wasn’t as surprised by the reaction of the the school board chair, Barney Bishop, so much as she was by the rest of the board members who went along with the decision to oust her.

Barney Bishop also spoke to HuffPost and for his part has said that this is not a singular incident to happen with Carrasquilla and that there have been other issues. Bishop continued to say that he was lobbying for legislation that would give parents even more input in primary education.

“Parental rights trump everything else,” Bishop said. According to him, parents choose a school like the public charter Tallahassee Classical for it’s approach to children’s education.

“We don’t use pronouns,” Bishop said. “We don’t teach CRT and we don’t ever mention 1619—those are not appropriate subjects for our kids.”

It seems as though Florida schools are in the headlines more and more every day. From their recent push to pass archaic legislation limiting sexual education and banning period talk to their ongoing efforts to ban books about subjects they don’t like, conservatives are working hard to regulate education.