The Osceola County School Board is meeting Tuesday to decide the fate of a new program that would allow chaplains to provide counseling support in district schools.
The vote was delayed earlier this month after the Satanic Temple showed interest in participating in the program in Osceola County.
Board members will now have to decide whether to allow religious chaplains in schools, at all.
Rabbi Merrill Shapiro, the President of the Atlantic Coast Chapter of Americans United, said whether the board approves the program or not, he predicts it will face legal challenges.
He said there’s a reason we have a separation of church and state protected in our Constitution.
“Jefferson, Madison, our founders, wanted to save the Florida Department of Education and not allow them to get mired into this mess of deciding who's a chaplain, who is not and what's a religion and what's not," said Shapiro. “The Florida Department of Education seems to be thumbing its nose at the founders.”
Central Florida Freethought Community Director David Williamson said he’s against the program, too, and hopes commissioners vote it down.
“There are plenty of pastors looking for opportunities to talk to students, many of them on campus already, and there's no shortage of churches in the community. This is unnecessary because religious and spiritual guidance can be sought after school on the weekends, right,” he asked.
Governor Ron DeSantis and other supporters of the program which became legal July 1 said it’s a way to address a statewide shortage of school counselors amidst rising rates of depression and anxiety in kids.
The Florida Department of Education released last week its model policy that schools could use when implementing the program.
In it, only chaplains from religious organizations that “meet in-person at least monthly at a location within the geographical boundaries of the school district” would be able to participate in the program.
And religions are strictly defined as, “an organized group led, supervised, or counseled by a hierarchy of teachers, clergy, sages, or priests that (1) acknowledges the existence of and worships a supernatural entity or entities that possesses power over the natural world, (2) regularly engages in some form of ceremony, ritual, or protocol, and (3) whose religious beliefs impose moral duties independent of the believer’s self-interest.”
In the Osceola County policy, however, there are no stipulations about who can be a chaplain, or the religious beliefs they must hold.
The Osceola policy simply states that chaplains would need to reside in Osceola County, undergo and pass a background check, and could not proselytize as part of their interactions with students.
In both policies, a chaplain could not discipline a student, and only students with parental consent could visit chaplains.
Read the full Osceola County chaplain policy here.
Watch the previous school board meeting, when the chaplains vote was tabled:
