Rep. Jamie Allard: Spreading Anti-Trans Lies to Gut Public Schools

In the latest installment of Alaska’s far-right disinformation circus, Rep. Jamie Allard and perennial provocateur Jay McDonald have once again decided to reignite the tired, baseless narrative that the Anchorage School District (ASD) is secretly “transitioning” students behind parents’ backs—an accusation so unhinged you'd think it derived from an episode of Infowars—and maybe it did!

Failed candidate for everything McDonald, whose main contribution to public discourse over the past 2 years involved lying about a book that was never available to ASD students, posted a rant to Facebook this week, nonsensically claiming that ASD is enforcing a “sex change contract” without parental consent.

Never mind that the form in question—an entirely standard and above-board Title IX accommodation document revised in 2018 at the direction of then ASD Superintendent Dr. Deena Bishop—simply allows students to express their preferred pronouns, request privacy accommodations, or participate in gender-appropriate activities. There’s no mention of medical procedures, no nefarious backroom deals, and certainly no evidence that ASD is hiding anything from parents. But that doesn’t matter to McDonald, who has built his brand around pearl-clutching anti-trans hysteria and hate.

Now enter Rep. Jamie Allard, arguably our most reliably unserious and ineffective politician. Never one to let a fact get in the way of a good culture war tantrum, Allard shared McDonald’s post, demanding that ASD be stripped of all federal funding and denied an increase to the Base Student Allocation (BSA)—which, for those unfamiliar, is the per-student funding that helps keep Alaska’s schools functioning.

“They need to loose ALL federal funding,” wrote Allard, proving once again that cutting education funding might not be such a great idea, especially for those who don't know when to properly use loose and lose in a sentence.

Back to the thing, in her usual performative way, Allard is effectively advocating for punishing all students in ASD—cutting their resources, increasing class sizes, and worsening teacher shortages—all because she’s upset about a form that ensures kids feel safe in school.

Allard's call to defund the Anchorage School District is both stunning and hypocritical. Just last year, she voted to give herself a hefty pay raise—bumping her salary from $50,400 to $84,000—claiming it was necessary due to inflation and the cost of living. Yet now, when it comes to adequately funding ASD's already struggling schools, she’s suddenly a fiscal conservative, demanding that ASD be stripped of all federal funding and receive no increase to the Base Student Allocation. The contradiction here is stunning: Allard is more than happy to line her own pockets with taxpayer dollars but refuses to support the basic needs of students and teachers. If funding for schools is so “excessive,” maybe she should give back that excessive raise.

Oh, and let us not forget that this is the same Jamie Allard who was removed from the Alaska Human Rights Commission after defending Nazi terminology on license plates, so it’s hardly surprising that she’s once again embracing far-right conspiracy theories over reality. But what’s particularly insidious here is the intent: Allard and McDonald are exploiting Alaska’s LGBTQ+ youth as pawns in their ongoing crusade to dismantle public education, rile up the extremist base, and push a narrative designed to demonize anyone who dares to support inclusion in schools.

If this sounds familiar, it's because this is all a strategy straight out of the MAGA national playbook—create fake moral panic, vilify teachers and schools as the enemy, and then use it as an excuse to gut public education. It’s also why Alaska’s education funding crisis continues to worsen: because confabulators like McDonald and legislators like Allard and Julie Coulombe are more interested in scoring points with the far right than actually supporting the students they claim to care about.