Florida preschool accused of putting children in Blackface

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A Florida preschool is under fire after children were photographed in what appeared to be blackface.

Florida preschool accused of letting students wear blackface

According to a report by CNN, the incident took place in the first week of Black History Month at Studio Kids Little River, a daycare owned and operated by Patricia Vitale in Miami, FL.

On Feb. 3, a teacher shared several pictures on the school’s messaging app along with a caption that read: “Black History Month.” One of the photos showed a child dressed as a police officer and another as a construction worker with brown paint on their face.

Parents were livid after seeing the images

Parents who saw the images immediately expressed outrage, and accused the school of putting children in a blackface.

“You’re a certified, established institutions, you should know better,” said Courtney Politis, whose one-year-old daughter attended the daycare. “I mean, ignorance on — about racism in 2023 is no longer ignorant, in my opinion.”

While her daughter is not in that particular classroom, Politis was “flabbergasted” by what she saw. Politis reached out to the day care’s owner to say the incident was racist.

Vitale later apologized in a message to parents:

“We have not intended to offend anyone, and we’re very sorry about any inconvenience,” her message said.

Three days later, Vitale sent another message noting that her staff would receive additional training in response to the incident.

“We wanted to let all the parents know that we met on Friday afternoon with all the teachers and staff. We went over several ethical and multicultural education points. I will teach the team a class covering all the necessary topics regarding US history and multicultural education … you may rest assured this will never happen again,” the message read.

Politis said she was disappointed and decided to pull her two children out of two separate branches of Studio Kids.

“The bottom line is we can’t trust them with our children all apologies aside,” Politis told CNN. “I thought we would have more time before these sorts of things or racism or microaggressions would have to be experienced by our children. So the fact that you can’t, I feel like I can’t protect my children from what’s happening is probably the most disappointing and upsetting of all of this.”