Houston ISD school board votes against allowing chaplains to serve as hired, volunteer counselors

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 and superintendent 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.

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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.

The vote comes as some school boards in the region, including Katy ISD and Humble ISD, have discussed allowing chaplains to serve in their school districts but have not taken a vote yet. Dallas and Austin ISDs have rejected the idea, while Round Rock and Georgetown ISD are among the districts to approve chaplains.

The majority of the HISD community members at Thursday’s board meeting who spoke on the resolution urged the board not to allow chaplains to serve as counselors.

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“Please say no to pastors as counselors,” Nelva Williamson, the vice president of the Houston Education Association, told the board. “The rich diversity of our religious beliefs in our district should not be curtailed by the focus of one religious view as I feel would happen with pastors.”

Jaime Villa, a local pastor, told the board that chaplains can serve as role models and mentors. He said that chaplains are not intending to replace counselors, but they want to work with counselors to help students.

“For the last eight years, I’ve been involved in the lives of over 500 kids and we have helped them overcome anger, depression and suicide,” Villa said. “With all the successful stories that I have witnessed and all the miracles that I have seen firsthand, I can confidently say that mentors and counselors make such a great difference in the life of a child.”