Marion County School Board decides against allowing chaplains in school

File photo: School Board Chair Lori Conrad listens during a meeting of the Marion County School Board in Ocala, Fla. on Tuesday, May 28, 2024. [Bruce Ackerman/Ocala Gazette] 2024.

Marion County will not implement a policy of allowing chaplains in public schools after the Marion County School Board declined to implement a measure similar to the statewide school chaplain initiative pushed by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

All four of the citizens who spoke at the Dec. 10 board meeting opposed introducing chaplains into local schools, citing concerns over religious freedom and the separation of church and state.

The motion failed in a 2-2 vote, with School Board Chair Lori Conrad and Board Member Nancy Thrower in dissent and Board Members Allison Campbell and Sarah James in favor. Vice Chair Eric Cummings was not at the meeting.

“I believe that it…is going to create more challenges for our staff and our families than what it’s going to accomplish,” Conrad said. “It hurts my heart. I love the idea of having chaplains on campus for students who have permission from their parents to visit and talk with someone that’s faith-based.”

Conrad said Marion County Public Schools is facing a shortage of mental health specialists and she wishes for the board to revisit other options other than chaplaincy to help ease that strain.

If the policy were to have passed, the superintendent and her staff would have been responsible for developing procedure for who would be allowed to volunteer as chaplains and assume responsibility for the health, safety and welfare of students.

Deborah Daniels, a retired teacher and grandparent of two MCPS students, opposed the idea, stating that chaplains would not be able to fill the vacancies of mental health counselors in school but would only add an unnecessary burden to students and staff.

“Chaplains are trained to provide religious counseling to people in spiritual need and are unqualified to provide student mental health services,” Daniels said. “They do not have the training or the experience to ensure that they adhere to our school’s educational mandates and avoid veering in proselytizing and other promotion of religion, which is unconstitutional by school employees and our volunteers.”

Daniels said that because of state guidelines, it would put more pressure on school staff to ensure the legitimacy of the volunteers.

“They would take on that burden of vetting, investigating and then approving each applicant, then posting names to their school websites with whatever faith those chaplains are identifying with, communicating with parents and families and all the collection of all the forms and opt-ins and opt-outs, and then scheduling, monitoring and supervising those volunteers,” Daniels said.

The Florida Department of Education offered a model policy for how districts might carry out the initiative, including that volunteer chaplains must be someone who is officially authorized by the leadership of a religion to conduct religious exercises.

Minimum requirements for chaplains are that they have local religious affiliations; have bachelor’s degrees; and have graduate degrees in counseling or theology or can demonstrate seven years of experience as chaplains, according to FDOE.

Thrower, who voted no on the measure, said she believed that the state law has not yet evolved enough for the district to implement a policy that would align with the statute.

“This new voluntary state law, no matter how well-intended, isn’t ready for prime time at many levels,” Thrower said. “Therefore, it is my position that any policies and procedures related to this new voluntary law are not ready for prime time, either.”

David Williamson, board secretary for the Interfaith Council of Central Florida, spoke in opposition to the measure on behalf of the Central Florida Free Thought Community.

“A chaplain policy seems like a brilliant idea, but the devil is literally in the details. Government has long avoided entering the business of religion in the U.S. since we invented the separation of church and state 250 years ago,” Williamson said.

Williamson’s concerns also centered on avoiding discrimination for members of minority religions, as he feared that most volunteer chaplains would be Christian in alignment with the majority religion of Marion County.

As of 2020, the three highest concentrations of religious groups in Marion County are Catholics (38,372), non-denominational Christians (30,430), and Southern Baptists (18,015), according to the Association of Religion Data Archives.

Of the supporters, Campbell said she believed the policy would be effective given that parents would still have the right to opt in or opt out of whatever programs they see fit for their children.

“Chaplains may be of the predominant religion that was discussed here today, or they may not be. That would be up to volunteers in our community—rabbis and imams and other religions and faiths to come forward and choose to be volunteers in our schools,” she said.

The policy would have offered parents the opportunity to allow or not allow their children to have non-secular conversations in a school environment.

“Our students do have challenges, and some of those challenges they would like to speak with someone in a non-secular way, in the location that they spend the predominance of their day,” Campbell said.