Targeted: Anchorage Police Investigating False Bomb Threats at Multiple Schools
Anchorage Police are investigating false bomb threats made at multiple Anchorage city schools. The false threats come just hours after Fox News published a poorly written account of a February 7 Anchorage School Board meeting where local activist Jay McDonald falsely claimed that a controversial book was circulating amongst students in a school library.
Since Fox News ran its piece, the social media accounts of the school district, including those belonging to board members Carl Jacobs and Margo Bellamy, have been besieged by right-wing cancel-culturalists. Board member Kelly Lessens’ Facebook account appears to have been temporarily deactivated.
The Facebook page of board member Carl Jacobs is rife with comments calling him a pedophile and groomer. Others have called for him to be investigated by law enforcement. Other comments left on Jacobs’ social media accounts are even more disturbing.
“I think he forgot where he lives... A land full of the hardest men and women on the planet and he thinks this kind of behavior will go unpunished.....Soon,” read one of many comments.
“Pedophile Carl Jacobs hasn’t seen a real brawl ever....yet,” stated another.
The trouble began when Anchorage resident Jay McDonald, a former candidate and current member of the far-right Facebook group, Save Anchorage, started reading from the book, Let’s Talk About It at last week’s school board meeting.
McDonald has established a pattern of handpicking tantalizing passages from school material he finds objectionable and reading them during the public testimony portion of school board meetings. It’s unclear why McDonald might want to read books intended for teens at meetings that could potentially be heard by young children via the school board’s televised livestream. There is a process that allows any public member to bring concerns about ASD policy, including library books, to the district’s attention.
“I am going to interrupt you at this point. It sounds like you have a concern about a book that I’d be glad to get you connected to the superintendent to go through the appropriate process,” Jacobs said during the meeting, halting McDonald’s testimony.
Conservative school board member Dave Donley appealed Jacob’s ruling, which brought about a 5-2 vote with a majority agreeing to end McDonald’s testimony.
The former failed political candidate McDonald who some have suggested may be looking to raise his profile ahead of another potential run for public office, left the meeting and recorded a sixteen-minute Facebook live video, lamenting that the school board had silenced him from reading the book he claimed was in a school library.
In the days following the board meeting, it was revealed that McDonald was incorrect in stating the book was available to students at an ASD school. Because school libraries provide materials and support for the entire school, many ASD libraries maintain a professional collection. This collection is specifically for staff and includes material such as books and DVD players. The physical location of this collection varies by site but is isolated in a workroom or other space not accessible by students.
Regardless, Fox News missed that salient detail, regurgitating misinformation in a graphic that stated the book was “in Anchorage, Alaska, school district libraries,” failing to note that the book was inaccessible to students.
Jacobs was relatively unknown before being elected to the school board in 2021. Since being elected, he has helped shepherd significant policy revisions that strengthened board transparency and accountability, implemented new anti-bullying measures, and modernized district student nutrition and physical activity guidelines. He and his wife have spent the last decade as licensed treatment foster parents, caring for more than 50 adolescents from diverse backgrounds, and are seen as tireless advocates for children.
School Board President Margo Bellamy has spent over forty years in education. In her service to children and families, she serves on the board of directors for several local and national youth and family-serving organizations, including the Alaska Children’s Trust (ACT) Board of Directors; the Alaska Community Foundation Board of Directors; The Anchorage Library Foundation and the Alaska Association of School Board (AASB) Board of Directors.
Members of Save Anchorage have encouraged their supposed 8,200+ strong following to attend next week’s school board meeting to complain about the LGBTQ book that...was...never...available...to students.
So, that tracks.
