A Texas woman who ignited a national firestorm over a religious-exclusive event at a publicly financed waterpark turns out to be running a childhood education center that shares a bizarre misspelling with a notorious Minneapolis daycare — and nobody is laughing.
Aminah Knight, the driving force behind the DFW Epic Eid organization, thought she had a plan: rent out Epic Waters Indoor Waterpark in Grand Prairie for an Eid celebration and advertise it as open to Muslim attendees only.
What she did not plan for was the entire country finding out about it.
Knight also wears another professional hat — she owns, operates, and designs the curriculum for the Excellence Early Learning Center in Hurst, a quiet Fort Worth suburb where parents trust her with their youngest children, some still in diapers.
There is just one problem. Her center’s own website introduces the facility as the “Excellence Early Learing Center” — dropping the “n” in “learning” in a typo that mirrors one previously spotted at a controversial Minneapolis daycare that made headlines of its own.
The misspelling sits at the top of the site, where first impressions are made and where parents go to decide whether a facility is worthy of their child.
Despite the error, the center markets itself as a warm, enriching haven. Promotional materials promise “the loving, personal care that they need to thrive and feel confident” and tout “multiculturalism, small classroom sizes, healthy eating and a warm, loving environment that feels like home.”
Staff credentials listed on the site include degrees in “education, accounting, biology, pharmacology, science, nursing and mathematics from their home countries.”
Knight herself is credentialed. She holds a master’s degree from the University of Southern California and a doctorate from Vanderbilt University — pedigree that made her waterpark controversy all the more surprising to observers.
Epic Waters is no ordinary community pool. The sprawling 80,000-square-foot indoor waterpark opened in 2017 after Grand Prairie residents voted in 2014 to approve a 0.25% sales tax increase to fund its $88 million construction.
A promotional flyer for the third-annual Eid event declared that “the entire waterpark has been exclusively reserved for Muslims” and mandated modest swimwear for every attendee — language that detonated across social media and cable news almost instantly.
Knight moved quickly to revise the flyer, stripping out the exclusionary phrasing. She told the New York Post in an email that the original language missed its mark.
“The core intention behind this event is to create a space where individuals and families who value modest dress and a modest environment can come together and feel comfortable enjoying a recreational space that often doesn’t naturally accommodate those preferences,” she wrote.
The clarification did not cool the outrage.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott entered the fray and drew a hard line, threatening to pull $530,000 in public safety grants from Grand Prairie unless city officials canceled the event before May 11.
“A city-owned water park in Grand Prairie openly advertised a ‘MUSLIMS ONLY‘ event – closed to the general public,” Abbott declared in a post on X.
The city folded. “After further review and in the best interest of the City of Grand Prairie, the June 1 Eid event at Epic Waters Indoor Waterpark has been canceled,” a city spokesperson confirmed to the New York Post.
Knight did not respond when the New York Post reached out for comment about the typo connecting her education center to the Minneapolis daycare.
The misspelling remains on the website.
