Religious Officials in Public Schools One Step Closer to Becoming Law

TALLAHASSEE, FL—A bill allowing volunteer religious officials in public schools passed its final Senate Committee Monday afternoon, drawing criticisms over untrained professionals providing counseling to children.

"This bill authorizes each school district to adopt a policy to authorize volunteer school chaplains to provide support services and programs to students with parental consent," said Republican Sen. Erin Grall, SB 1044's sponsor, in Monday's Senate Rules Committee.

The measure provides for volunteer chaplains, or clergymen, in schools, and charges these religious officials with providing mental health and spiritual counseling for students and staff. The volunteers must pass a background check, though critics called out the lack of counseling certifications required for these chaplains.

"Some of these people that we trust in the clergy are some of the people unfortunately that have shown a history of sexual abuse and inappropriate interactions with children, so just because somebody's clergy doesn't mean they're safe enough to be around children," one woman said in public testimony, citing a series of Florida clergymen accused of the sexual abuse of minors.

Dr. Russell Meyer of the Florida Council of Churches agreed, focusing on the lack of training requirements for these school chaplains. "Volunteer chaplains don't have to have any training in human development, in child development, in counseling skills...please, let's have trained people working with our students, not untrained people," he said.

On the other hand, supporters lauded the bill for bringing spirituality into schools, with the Christian Family Coalition citing the "spiritual and physical battlegrounds" that schools have become with school shootings. They explained that "sometimes a child does need a spiritual counselor where they wouldn't feel necessarily comfortable going to a regular guidance counselor."

Republican Sen. Dennis Baxley also voiced his support for SB 1044, stating that both the medical and military fields have chaplains, so why don't schools? "They don't have anybody to turn to. And then we see incidents occur where people are just bottled up, have no anchor no one to reach for to help them cope or understand what environment they're in."

The bill passed the Senate Rules Committee, and will now head to the Senate Floor. Its House counterpart has already passed the floor, making the Senate Floor the bill's final obstacle before becoming law.