Houston ISD’s Board of Managers voted unanimously Thursday to approve a resolution preventing chaplains from serving as hired or volunteer school counselors in the district.
Gov. Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 763 in June, which requires each school board to vote before March 1 on whether to authorize their campuses to hire chaplains to provide mental health support or allow them to serve as volunteers. Under the law, the chaplains do not have to be certified by the State Board for Educator Certification as counselors.
The Board of Managers voted during its monthly meeting to not allow chaplains to be hired for those roles unless they are otherwise qualified. The board members did not discuss their reasoning for voting in favor of the resolution, except to approve minor wording changes to the measure.
“The HISD School Board hereby does not permit hiring chaplains to serve in the capacity of counselors or mental health or behavioral health professionals, except that they, like all applicants, remain eligible for hire if they meet all qualifications for the desired positions and are deemed the best candidates,” the resolution says.
The law allows chaplains to provide behavioral health services, programs related to suicide prevention, intervention and mental health support in schools. The chaplains are also authorized to develop and implement programs focused on restorative justice practices and culturally relevant instruction for students.
State lawmakers passed the bill in 2023 to address a shortage of counselors on school campuses, although community members in certain districts and some chaplains have criticized the bill for bringing religion into schools and not requiring chaplains to be certified or trained.
See here for a bit of background. Please note that 1) people who are chaplains and are also qualified by the state to serve as counselors can still do so at HISD; 2) quite a few actual chaplains think this bill was a bad idea; and 3) the Lege, with a $33 billion budget surplus, chose to take this action instead of allocating more money to schools and school districts for the purpose of attracting and hiring more qualified candidates for the jobs. The HISD Board of Managers quite rightly decided that the status quo was better than employing this half-assed solution. Good for them. Houston Landing and Houston Public Media have more.