Lee County School Board member's photo shocks Diplomat Elementary parents

CAPE CORAL, Fla. (WINK)—A photo of a student giving the middle finger ended up in Diplomat Elementary School's yearbook, leaving parents shocked.

The photo appears on a page purchased and dedicated to a student by a parent. WINK News confirmed that the parent is Lee County School Board member Vanessa Chaviano from District 7.

"That's really bad, really ugly," said Gilda, a grandparent. "It's a photo they should have taken down the moment they got it and made it disappear and put the girl, I mean, the girl likely didn't know what she was doing."

In an email response, Chaviano said the picture was an old toddler photo of her youngest daughter, included by her family in a collage.

"It was an attempt at a silly, candid toddler moment," Chaviano said. "That, in hindsight, was in poor taste and not appropriate for school publication."

Pereira reached out to the School District of Lee County to ask how the photo ended up in the yearbook. In an email the principal sent to parents on Thursday, it states the ad was submitted directly to their yearbook vendor and that the standard review process failed to catch the image before the page was printed.

Parents said it could have been much worse.

"Something even worse could have popped up just because you didn't notice," Gilda said. "But when you're about to submit a photo somewhere, as an adult, since the little girl didn't submit it, you check it, you check it again, and you delete it, because that says a lot about the adult."

The district said the school is reviewing its submission and oversight processes to ensure this does not happen again.