The school district that is home to the state senator who got a bill passed last year to allow public schools to hire unlicensed “chaplains” to replace licensed school counselor is poised to reject his plan.
Sen. Mayes Middleton lives on Galveston Island, which is located on the Texas Gulf Coast about 50 miles southeast of Houston. On Tuesday, Feb. 6, a board policy committee of Galveston Independent School District recommended rejecting the option for Christian chaplains in schools instead of counselors. The vote will take place at the next board meeting, which is scheduled for Feb. 21.
Mayes Middleton
Ironically, that recommendation came in the middle of National School Counseling Week, which was featured on the top of the district’s website home page.
Texas public school districts are required by law to vote yes or no on allowing the so-called “chaplains” by March 1. To date, half the largest districts in the state have rejected the idea while the remainder of the 25 largest districts have not yet voted, according to a tracking map produced by Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. Most reports of districts that have voted for the chaplains come from the most religiously conservative areas of the state, including the northern suburbs of Dallas-Fort Worth, which have been Ground Zero for Christian nationalists attempting to take over school boards, and some northern suburbs of Austin.
On Feb. 8, the Houston Chronicle published a 3,000-word report on how Houston-area districts are responding to Senate Bill 763. That story included news that the board policy committee in Galveston has recommended rejecting the chaplain plan.
The newspaper reported about a dozen people spoke to the board about the choice to be made.
Supporters of the new legislation have downplayed the exclusively Christian nature of the law, even though the model bill came from an explicitly evangelical group in Oklahoma that seeks to evangelize children.
Rocky Malloy
Rocky Malloy, head of the National School Chaplain Association, showed up at the Galveston ISD board meeting. He previously said his goal is for Texas to be a model for other states to follow. Currently similar legislation has been introduced in Alabama.
Malloy’s organization, on its website, says using chaplains will “lower school violence” including “shootings, fighting, bullying and physical assault” by giving students “a solid spiritual foundation and a safe space to express their pain and frustrations.”
Chaplains are needed, the group says, because “spiritual care has long been absent from the school system. As a result, students are often left alone to navigate complex emotions without support from trusted adults or authority figures.”
Malloy has published 13 books for students from kindergarten to 12th grade to teach what he considers biblical principles.
The legislation has been widely criticized by religious liberty groups, including BJC, which now has a field organizer based in North Texas as part of its Christians Against Christian. Nationalism project.
Unlicensed chaplains are not needed in public schools, which are intended to be religion-neutral spaces, critics of the law argue. They see the chaplains as thinly disguised evangelists not only for the Christian faith but for a conservative subset of the Christian faith.
The majority of school districts in Texas appear to be waiting until the last minute to vote. Of the 25 largest districts in the state — which are dominated by the metro areas of Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth — 13 have yet to vote. One of those is Humble ISD, located in metro Houston.
In January, several community members showed up at the board meeting to speak about the bill, even though it was not on the agenda that night. One of those was Tracy Shannon who urged the Humble trustees to vote yes on the chaplains. She wore a shirt saying “God planned it. Noah built it. I believe it” and asked board members: “Will this body vote with God or against God?”
The Houston Chronicle identified one member of the Texas State Board of Education who is actively working to get school districts to adopt the chaplains scheme.
Julie Pickren is a Republican from Pearland, who is part of the Houston metro area. In addition to serving on the state board, she is a board member for the National School Chaplain Association. She also was present at the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
The Chronicle said she is writing letters and emails to school leaders and in one such letter argued, “Throughout America, chaplains have been a great resource for suicide prevention and post-treatment.”
That follows one of the chief arguments of Malloy and his supporters, who are couching the use of Christian chaplains in schools as a means of suicide prevention — striking at every parent’s worst fear.
In an email to another district, she said, “For the maximum benefit, the goal is to hire a chaplain for each campus.”
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