By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Staff Writer
A bill proposed earlier this month in the state House of Representatives would require written parental consent for a student to change their pronouns in school or engage with coursework related to gender identity, but the proposal received pushback from a Sitka High student, who testified in Juneau last week.
Put before the House at the request of Gov. Mike Dunleavy on March 8, the bill is framed as a way to protect “parental rights in a child’s education; relating to access to school records; relating to sex education, human reproduction education, and human sexuality education.”
HB105 would require parental consent for curricula “involving gender identity, human reproduction, or sexual matters” but also “before the name or pronoun used by a public school to address or refer to the parent’s child in person, on school identification, or in school records is changed.”
The bill was referred to the House Education Committee, and last week that committee heard from Sitka High School junior Felix Myers, who was in Juneau for a legislative fly-in.
In his testimony, Myers said that if passed into law the measure would pose a risk to LGBTQ students, especially those who don’t have a safe or accepting home environment.
Myers is the incoming student adviser to the state Board of Education and is also the student representative on the Sitka School Board.
In his testimony to the legislators, Myers characterized HB105 as a “significant threat,” especially to transgender youth in the state.
“Transgender students face some of the most dangerous situations and many of them do not feel comfortable in their homes,” Myers testified. “And so the students that would be affected by having to have parent permission, and the ones that are not able to get parent permission, are the ones that are most likely in danger of being in an unsafe situation. And so having it so that the schools are not able to protect those students’ safety is a significant threat.”
Sitka Rep. Rebecca Himschoot, who sits on the education committee, said she opposes the bill and thinks it would harm students.
“Just by introducing this bill, already some kids who need as much support as they can get from the adults around them could potentially feel targeted, even if that’s not the intent of the bill,” Himschoot told the Sentinel by phone from Juneau. “I can imagine they would feel that way. And then I think if the bill were to pass that would just amplify that situation for those kids.” Himschoot, a longtime teacher in the Sitka School District, also served on the Alaska state Board of Education.
Myers testified that if it should become law HB105 could “severely diminish” the affected students’ ability to learn and highlighted the elevated suicide rate among LGBTQ youths.
“It’s very dangerous, I’d say, and I express caution when looking at this bill,” he concluded.
A 2020 National Institutes of Health study showed that about four-fifths of trans youths have considered suicide. Addressing that finding, the The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ advocacy group, says on its website:
“LGBTQ youth are not inherently prone to suicide risk because of their sexual orientation or gender identity but rather placed at higher risk because of how they are mistreated and stigmatized in society.”
Maggie Cothron, the current student adviser to the Board of Education, also spoke at the House Education Committee hearing, and said she shares Myers’ concern about the risks posed by HB105.
“The whole point of education is to give a quality education to students… and part of that is being able to feel safe and to be accepted in your own community,” Cothron testified. “I have friends who don’t come out to their parents because they don’t feel safe. They don’t feel that their parents will accept them and be who they want to be… (The bill would) have a lot of negative consequences that you may not realize.”
In an interview with the Sentinel Myers, said, “I know people across the state that are LGBTQ who have attempted suicide. And part of that is that they don’t feel safe, because their parents aren’t accepting of them… That adds just a whole level of pain and terror. What this piece of legislation can do is shove kids back into the closet – in school – one of the only places they might feel like they can be themselves.”
Himschoot said HB105, one of a record number of anti-LGTBQ bills introduced in states across the country this year, likely faces an uphill battle in the Alaska legislature.
But it is not the only anti-LGBTQ action in the state lately. In 2021, the State Commission for Human Rights dropped language that protected Alaskans from sex- or gender-based discrimination, the Anchorage Daily News reported two weeks ago.
And on Friday the state Board of Education passed a resolution restricting the right of transgender girls to participate in sports. The non-binding resolution is framed as being “in support of preserving the opportunity for student athletes while balancing competitive fairness, inclusion, and safety for all who compete.” In effect, the board’s action mirrors the same restrictions that are proposed in HB27, a bill introduced in the legislature on January 19 this year.
As the incoming student adviser to the state Board of Education, Myers said he the board’s action this past Friday caught him by surprise.
“I didn’t know that that was going to happen until that morning. They emailed us that resolution that morning. It wasn’t on the agenda at all,” he said.
The resolution calls for the creation of a girls division “based on a student’s sex at birth… (and) a division for students who identify with either sex or gender.”
Myers finds it unlikely that teams would form in an open division.
“I can’t see a world in which, in that division, people will actually play,” Myers said.
Himschoot said the sudden addition of the item to the agenda wasn’t evidence of an open public process.
“The most distressing part of the whole thing to me is if you can’t have a sound, public process then the thing you’re trying to do may not be the right thing to do,” she said.
Myers said he plans to keep speaking out against anti-LGBTQ bills and regulations.
“The times of these bills being introduced is not going to stop anytime soon; the times of these resolutions being introduced by the state board is not going to stop,” he said. “And so when this continues to happen, I’m not going to back down, I’m going to keep my voice heard and make sure that it’s known that there is a dissenting opinion on these issues.”
The full text of HB105 and HB27 is posted online at akleg.gov.
