The House Education Committee must not have liked what it heard during the first round of public testimony on Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s controversial “parents’ rights” bill—which delivered a wave of opposition—because it’s set for a second hearing this Thursday.
House Education Committee co-chair Rep. Jamie Allard has been an outspoken supporter of the governor’s legislation, which mirrors Florida’s notorious “Don’t Say Gay” bill and would bar teachers from talking about sex or gender without written permission from parents and has been working to drum up testimony in support of the legislation.
“The media has misled the public about the realities of HB105, provoking inflammatory responses and outrageous accusations that the bill somehow endangers and discriminates against gender non-conforming students,” she wrote in a Facebook post promoting the hearing, adding “First time testifiers ONLY.”
How to testify
The House Education Committee is set to begin its public hearing on the legislation at 5:15 p.m. on Thursday, April 13. You can testify in person at the Capitol or any legislative information office. You can also testify by calling the following numbers:
- Anchorage: 907-563-9085
- Juneau: 907-586-9085
- Other: 844-586-9085
During the roughly five hours of public testimony that the committee heard in late March, where more than 100 people testified against the legislation while about a dozen testified in support, Allard routinely bickered with testifiers, complaining that anecdotes about harm and suicide among LGBTQ+ kids were not on topic.
Many testifiers said the legislation—which would require written consent from parents for students to use different pronouns or a nickname and would also potentially force teachers to out students who might confide in them to their parents—will create problems where there currently aren’t any.
“At the school, it is not an issue; you are making it an issue,” Juneau teacher Meagan Hintontold the committee. “The governor is making it an issue. Kids have enough to figure out on their own; they don’t need other people telling them what they’re doing is wrong when what they’re doing is expressing themselves as an individual.”
Others raised concerns about how the legislation would reclassify the state’s sex abuse awareness—which provides kids with age-appropriate education on how to set boundaries as well as identify and alert people to sexual abuse—and teen dating violence programs into sex education and bar them from being taught to young kids.
“It lets rapists be rapists,” another testifier said.
As you can see, probably not exactly what Rep. Allard and other supporters of the governor’s legislation would want to hear, but dismissing public testimony is not exactly new for the House Republicans this session.
Following a public hearing where the public showed overwhelming support for an increase to school funding, House Education Committee member Rep. Tom “My children belong to me” McKay said it didn’t really count.
“Principals, superintendents, teachers, people that make their living off the BSA and the money we send them,” he said the day following that testimony. “It’s not necessarily true that we were receiving public testimony. I speak for the folks who sit home and work.”
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Twitter.
