Bill Hill’s transgender policy allowed Bristol Bay boys to use girls’ bathrooms, play on their teams

By SUZANNE DOWNING

Sept. 26, 2026 – Before Bill Hill entered Alaska’s race for Congress as an independent, he spent a decade as superintendent of the Bristol Bay Borough School District. During his tenure, he oversaw a transgender regulation that allowed boys into girls’ restrooms, locker rooms, and sports teams. He never once raised an objection to this policy.

Hill is now running for Congress with the endorsement of the Alaska Democratic Party, which supports such policies. About 11% of Alaska voters are registered Democrats.

The Bristol Bay School District’s administrative regulation AR 5145.3, “Transgender Students and Employees,” was revised in 2017, while Hill was superintendent. Adopted from the Anchorage School District policy, it said a student’s asserted gender identity did not require a formal medical evaluation or diagnosis. Administrators were to develop an individual plan addressing such matters as names, pronouns, facilities and athletics. 

On names and pronouns, the regulation said staff should respect a student’s preferred form of address without requiring a legal change. Its instruction for communications with parents is striking:

Staff were instructed to use the student’s legal name and pronoun corresponding to the sex assigned at birth when contacting parents, unless the student, parent or guardian specified otherwise. In other words, to essentially conceal information from parents that they are entitled to know. The regulation thus allowed a difference between how a student was addressed at school and how that student was addressed in a call or letter home.

For restrooms and locker rooms, Hill’s regulation said the district would work with transgender students and parents on accommodations. It encouraged single-user facilities where available but said a transgender student should not be required to use one. It also offered private facilities, partitions and separate changing schedules to students uncomfortable sharing a space. That was a fake solution. The school district only has one campus, and it has standard facilities.

Hill’s athletics provision permitted students to take part in intramural and district-sponsored interscholastic sports consistent with their “gender identity,” saying students had to assert a consistent identity and could not switch between male and female activities from season to season, subject to an exception only Bill Hill could grant. 

Parents Defending Education publicized the Bristol Bay regulation in 2024 and reported that the district did not respond to its two records requests about the policy’s origin.

Hill left the superintendent’s post in June 2023. Later that summer, the Alaska State Board of Education adopted a rule limiting participation on separate girls’ high-school interscholastic teams to students assigned female at birth. That later statewide action changed the landscape for the regulation’s sports language.

The sports position in the Bristol Bay document is well outside the preference expressed in national polling. In Gallup’s 2025 survey, 69% of adults said transgender athletes should compete only on teams matching their birth sex.

Pew Research Center found 66% favored policies requiring transgender athletes to compete on teams matching their sex assigned at birth. Both polling companies skew liberal in their bias.

Hill is seeking to unseat Republican Rep. Nick Begich.

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