The Quiet Coalition Behind Arizona’s Anti-LGBTQ+ School Board Proposals

In Prescott Valley, the Humboldt Unified School District governing board is once again weighing a so-called “parental notification” policy that advocates say would forcibly out LGBTQ+ students.

If approved, the policy would require educators and staff to inform guardians when a student asks to be addressed by a name or pronoun different from what's listed in their official school records.

Similar proposals have surfaced across the state. Nearly identical policies—targeting transgender and gender-diverse students—have been introduced, debated, and in some cases approved, often pulling language from a 2023 model policy book issued by a conservative group with little name recognition outside of education circles: the Arizona Coalition of School Board Members.

Although the coalition describes itself as nonpartisan, coalition founder Pam Kirby wrote in a column for the conservative website AZ Free Press that the organization is “led by unapologetically conservative school board leaders who are rejecting political indoctrination.”

Kirby, who served two terms on the Scottsdale Unified School District governing board and the Paradise Valley Town Council, started the coalition in 2021. She told 12News that the group was created to offer an alternative to the Arizona School Boards Association, an established statewide advocacy and training organization for public school district governing board members.

According to the coalition’s website, it claims to have members serving on 32 public school governing boards across the state.

Former state Sen. Sylvia Allen (R-Snowflake) has been on the coalition’s board since its beginning, and current Maricopa County Schools Superintendent Shelli Boggs, a Republican, also maintained a seat before last year’s election.

One of the coalition’s strategies is to rid public school guidelines affirming LGBTQ+ students and limit the curriculums around science, history, and health to be more aligned with morally conservative teachings.

In Mesa last month, conservative board member Sharon Benson pushed for a policy around pronouns and bathroom usage. Earlier this spring, the Peoria Unified School District passed a policy restricting students to use multi-occupancy bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers that correspond to their sex assigned at birth.

Those policies both appear in the coalition’s 2023 handbook.

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LOOKOUTJoseph Darius Jaafari (he/him)

But the Arizona Coalition of School Board Members doesn’t just push its own model policies, it also elevates those written by its member base that, for example, have sought to dismantle equity practices in Lake Havasu, remove transgender girls from youth sports at a Queen Creek district, and eliminate COVID-19 vaccination and masking requirements in the same school district.

In addition to policy, the coalition functions as a training, educational, and networking hub for school board members, candidates, and parents. One of its education partners, PragerU—a conservative media and education platform backed by Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne—markets its youth curriculum as pro-American with classes that include Biblical lessons and content rooted in “Judeo-Christian values,” according to its website’s course offerings.

At a summer gathering, the group hosted Rep. Lisa Fink (R-Glendale) who claimed comprehensive sex education—which covers topics like consent, contraception, and sexual identity—was harmful to students. Fink’s presentation, available to coalition members online, contained slides that claimed safe-sex education “eroticizes” condom use and encourages excessive sexual independence in youth.

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Progressive policy experts say the repetitive attempt to erase trans people from public life is dehumanizing.

LOOKOUTTori Gantz (she/they)

The coalition has also elevated the platforms of people who have made inflammatory statements against LGBTQ+ people: In 2022, the coalition invited Rhonda Thomas to speak to its members. Thomas is the creator of Truth in Education, a Christian education organization that campaigns against “transgender theory,” intersectionality, and queer theories. The group also advocates for churches to have public schools endorse off-campus schooling for Christian-based courses.

In 2023, the coalition named Dawn Densmore, president of a school district governing board in Surprise, its “School Board Member of the Year.” Densmore publicly opposed the Biden administration’s proposed revisions to Title IX that would have expanded legal safeguards for LGBTQ+ students. She was additionally endorsed by the political action committee tied to Arizona Women of Action, a far-right organization that advocates for state legislation opposing trans students’ rights and books with LGBTQ+ characters or themes in school libraries or curriculums.

Arizona Women of Action held recruitment and mentorship workshops throughout the previous election cycle focused on encouraging conservative parents to run for school board seats. In 2024, Humboldt Unified School District got three new board members who were also endorsed by Arizona Women of Action’s PAC.

In a leaked web meeting, school board candidates doubled-down on anti-trans rhetoric.

The webcast, organized by Arizona Women of Action, is part of a campaign to use LGBTQ+ issues as a galvanizing issue this November.

LOOKOUTTori Gantz (she/they)

To be clear, the coalition’s model policies don’t appear to be unique to Arizona. Instead, they echo language seen in other states and are part of a broader effort by far-right lawmakers and policy groups to use school boards as battlegrounds in their campaign against queer people in public life.

In 2023, for instance, a Humboldt Unified School District governing board member first proposed the “parental notification” policy that required educators to contact parents if a student requested to go by a different name or pronoun. That policy, according to HUSD superintendent Christine Griffin, was taken from a school district in Chino Valley, California, and pushed by the Coalition for Parental Rights, a group in California aligned with Moms for Liberty, a designated hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

This year, after the new board members—all endorsed by Arizona Women of Action—joined the Humboldt school board, they proposed to revisit the policy and put forward the Arizona coalition’s policy. It’s unclear where the coalition’s model policy originally came from.

The Arizona Coalition for School Board Members did not respond to comment before publishing.