Hillsdale cuts ties with Florida school embroiled in David controversy

Michigan's Hillsdale College said Thursday it is no longer affiliated with a Florida charter school embroiled in a controversy involving a parent complaint that accused the school of showing students pornography by exposing them to Michelangelo’s David statue.

Hillsdale said Tallahassee Classical School's license to use the conservative college's curriculum has been "revoked and will expire at the end of the school year." Hillsdale representatives would not specify when the license to use the curriculum was revoked or whether the controversy surrounding the David sculpture played a role in the college's disaffiliation.

"This drama around teaching Michelangelo’s 'David' sculpture, one of the most important works of art in existence, has become a distraction from, and a parody of, the actual aims of classical education," Hillsdale College said in a Thursday news release. "Of course, Hillsdale’s K-12 art curriculum includes Michelangelo’s 'David' and other works of art that depict the human form."

Hope Carrasquilla, the principal of Tallahassee Classical, was forced to resign last week after the David sculpture was included in a sixth-grade lesson on Renaissance art. One parent complained and said the sixth graders were exposed to pornography; others requested that the school inform them about the lesson before showing the "David" to their children, the Associated Press reported. The academy did not immediately respond Thursday to a request for comment on Hillsdale's disaffiliation.

Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam” painting and Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus" were also shown to students as part of the lesson.

Carrasquilla had been employed there since June 2021, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Tallahassee Classical has always shared "David" with its students and will continue to do so, the school said in a Facebook post shared last Friday, but "we will follow our policy and notify our parents in advance so they can make their own decision if it is age appropriate for their child," the post read.

Carrasquilla wasn't pressured to resign over the Michelango "David" issue but a series of decisions, Tallahassee school board Chairman Barney Bishop III told Slate in an interview.

When pressed on the Michelango issue, Bishop said the school didn't follow its traditional practice, done last year, of sending an advance notice that students would be seeing, hearing and talking about the art work. "This year, we didn’t send out that notice," he told Slate, and it was "an egregious mistake" because parents weren't able to "decide whether it is appropriate for their child to see it."

"Parents don’t decide what is taught," he added later. "But parents know what that curriculum is. And parents are entitled to know anytime their child is being taught a controversial topic and picture."

Tallahassee Classical is one of 10 Hillsdale-affiliated charter schools in Florida, according to the college's website.

Hillsdale’s relationships with the schools that license its curriculum are "founded upon a mutual understanding about the aims of education," the college said in a news release. "Discretion, good judgment, and prudence are essential for that endeavor to be successful."

According to the college, Hillsdale has partnered with charter schools across the country to provide them with a "classical scope and sequence" for free.

Fifty schools currently license Hillsdale's curriculum while 23 member schools use the curriculum and receive training and consultation from the college, according to the college's website for K-12 education.

In the Grosse Pointes, founders of the Hill Pointe School told The Detroit News last year said they hope to open a charter school in fall 2023 with a curriculum from Hillsdale College, a proposed development that has prompted criticism from opponents who worry the lesson plans will be decidely conservative or politicized. The proposed charter school would start as a K-5 school and add one grade a year until it reached K-12.

But other residents said politics are already in public schools, courtesy of liberals, and the conservative college's provision of a classical curriculum would offer intellectual diversity and another option for families.

The Hillsdale-provided coursework include its 1776 Curriculum, which covers American history, government and civics and seeks to portray America as an “exceptionally good country,” according to the Hillsdale website.

The Associated Press contributed.

hmackay@detroitnews.com