Florida Principal Forced to Resign for Showing Students Michelangelo Statue

A school principal in Tallahassee, Florida, was forced to resign because, she said, a Renaissance art lesson included a section on Michelangelo's sculpture of the Bible's David, which one parent described as pornographic.

Hope Carrasquilla, who had been the principal at Tallahassee Classical School, stepped down Monday during an emergency board meeting, the Tallahassee Democrat reported. She was appointed to the position less than a year ago.

The school board's chair, Barney Bishop, told Carrasquilla that she could either quit or be fired but gave no reason for the ultimatum. She told the newspaper that she believes it was because of the art lesson, saying, "It saddens me that my time here had to end this way."

In recent years, Florida has been a center of disputes over content taught to children in schools. In 2022, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation that bans teachers from discussing sexual orientation and gender identity in certain school grades. The same year, he also signed into law a bill that bans educators from teaching critical race theory in K-12 classrooms, even though CRT isn't part of the state's public school curriculum.

Carrasquilla said that the school is obligated by law to teach lessons on the Renaissance to sixth graders as part of the annual curriculum. But three parents complained that their children felt uncomfortable with the lesson, which included a section on David, a marble statue of a nude male that represents youthful beauty as well as the Italian city of Florence. It is considered one of Michelangelo's masterpieces as well as one of the Renaissance's greatest sculptures.

Two of the three parents said they wished they had been informed before the lesson was taught, even though the school board enacted a rule two months ago for notifying parents two weeks before the teaching of any "potentially controversial" content. The third parent said that the lesson featuring the statue was pornographic.

"Parental rights are supreme, and that means protecting the interests of all parents, whether it's one, 10, 20 or 50," Bishop said, according to the Democrat. He would not tell the newspaper why he gave Carrasquilla the ultimatum, based on advice from the school's legal team.

However, Carrie Boyd, one of the parents, argued that such a decision to oust a principal "started to feel like the school is becoming part of an agenda."

Bishop is a lobbyist who has expressed his support for DeSantis' approach to Florida's K-12 education, according to a story in The Independent, a British online newspaper.

"We agree with everything the governor is doing in the educational arena. We support him because he's right," Bishop said, according to the Independent's story. "The whole woke indoctrination going on about pronouns and drag queens isn't appropriate in school."

Newsweek reached out to the Tallahassee Classical School by email for comment.

A similar incident happened in Scottsdale, Arizona, in 2021 when principal Linda Ihnat was terminated after parents found sexual content in a book on an optional Advanced Placement English reading list, according to the Associated Press.

Parents alleged that the Horizon High School principal didn't inform them about the sensitive content of the book, So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson, which examines "cancel culture" and the ways some people are shamed by others on social media. The book includes profane language and references to bestiality and orgies, the AP's story said.