A school in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, has issued an apology for a school assignment given to fifth-grade students that asked them to pretend to be “a white master looking to buy a slave.”

Kenneth and Shannon Poole had been alerted when their daughter, a student at Conemaugh Township Elementary School, had brought the assignment home. The students had been asked to list what attributes they would like in their hypothetical slave, with the Pooles’ daughter losing points when she wrote that she would “treat the slaves nicely.”