Dripping Springs ISD allows chaplains to serve as volunteers

DRIPPING SPRINGS  — Chaplains will continue to serve in volunteer positions to support students on-campus in Dripping Springs ISD.

At its Jan. 29 regular meeting, the DSISD Board of Trustees unanimously approved a resolution to accept volunteer chaplains to provide support, services and programs to students. This stems from Senate Bill 763, passed by the 88th Texas Legislature, that requires each school board to take a record vote between Sept. 1, 2023, and March 1, 2024, on whether to adopt a policy authorizing a campus of the district to accept a volunteer chaplain.

The board had the option of employing chaplains as district employees, allowing them to continue as volunteers or removing them from campus altogether.

Several other school districts across the state have already voted on having chaplains serve in some capacity or removing them.

The resolution passed 7-0, yet it was not left without several public comments and extensive discussion by board members.

What the community has to say

Deborah Gaddis Reeves is a board-certified chaplain and the mother of two students at Walnut Springs Middle School. She has volunteered as a classroom parent, participated in PTA fundraisers, assisted teachers in weekly tasks and listened to children read.

Though being a chaplain herself, she expressed her opposition to the resolution.

“I adamantly oppose the chaplain program in public schools and urge you to reject the resolution and simply vote ‘no’ to Senate Bill 763,” Gaddis Reeves said. “The resolution permits a district campus to continue to accept, as a volunteer, a chaplain to provide support in accordance to the district’s policies, just as I do now. Thus, no policy change is needed to allow me or any other chaplain to continue volunteering in our schools.”

Another community member, Cortney Schwalbe, also opposed the resolution.

“What is separation of church and state, really? Our founding fathers were concerned that allowing religion to introduce beliefs and practices into the governing realm would create a polarizing environment that can make policing decisions and national leadership difficult and contentious,” she said. “Here we are in my beloved America in 2024. We have taken a dangerous leap from the ideals on which this country was founded, especially here in the great state of Texas. I am a person of faith, I love Jesus. We are a veteran family as you all mostly know, who lost a child while in active duty. I am adamantly against this volunteer chaplain program.”

“We just need to review the data to know volunteer chaplains could be a danger to our children and certainly not a risk that DSISD could afford to take,” Schwalbe continued. “It will be expensive as folks will lawyer up on this issue … I am a [sexual] abuse survivor times seven. One of perpetrators later became a pastor, raped his youth group kiddo and served six years of a 25-year sentence. With zero rules and guidelines outlined by our governor, allowing volunteer chaplains in schools will open the possibility of our children being victimized sexually.”

Matthew Werner, a pastor at a local church in Dripping Springs and a father of two students in the district, shared his experience being a volunteer in schools and his support for providing services to students.

“As a father of kids growing up in the public school system, I am passionate about the education and the care that they receive. In my line of work, I find myself spending time with a vast diverse humanity. My work has taken me all over the world and in many of those extended stays in [places] such as Uganda, Nicaragua or Kenya, those are aimed at sharing my faith,” he said. “However, I am also a member of this community and to summate the entirety of my conversations to evangelism is not realistic.”

“As a neighbor here, we have friends from many different faiths. We have had Hindus at our dinner table, many swim parties with our Jewish friends and walked trick-or-treat routes with friends that have different sexual orientations than myself,” Werner continued. “And all while never making those relationships about my faith, I care about these families. When I volunteer as a watchdog dad in my school, I enjoy befriending my daughter’s friends — high-fiving them [and] encouraging them in their education — because I want them to know there are people here who have their back, people here who want to encourage them [and] people here who want to see them flourish.”

Bruce Byron, who has grandchildren in DSISD, expressed his support for the resolution after highlighting his experience in the military and elsewhere. He said with the difficulty of being a chaplain, whether it’s a volunteer or professional role, the key of being a chaplain is “being able to on one hand, do a Sunday service or a Saturday service, then turn around and objectively deal with a person where they are at that moment.”

The board’s perspective

According to the resolution, the district does not prohibit chaplains or other religiously affiliated persons from serving as a volunteer in the district’s existing volunteer programs and opportunities and the board seeks to ensure that the district continues to work closely with community volunteers, including clergy/chaplains, in accordance with the district’s volunteer and visitor policies and procedures.

Listed as a component of the resolution, student and staff mental health services are currently provided and/or made available through district employees and contracted professionals and will not be provided through the volunteer programs. And while this has been a concern for some, DSISD Superintendent Dr. Holly Morris-Kuentz assured the board that this will remain the same.

“We have volunteer programs in our district. They may not be chaplaincy services, but we have lots of chaplains, and other individuals, in our ecumenical community who are part of our schools,” she said. “We are not, because of SB 763, planning to make changes in any of the ways in which people volunteer in our schools, which means chaplains are still welcome to be a volunteer in our district. They just may not be serving in a chaplaincy role, but we have always allowed them. We aren’t discriminating, we aren’t making changes to what we are doing and we are keeping our employees as our employees who are providing those services.”

To further explain the resolution, trustee Olivia Barnard said that SB 763 was introduced not to bring clergy into schools, but because rural areas were having difficulty hiring qualified, trained and certified mental health professionals.

Trustee Kim Cousins said that she is happy with the mental health services currently provided through district employees and contracted professionals from outside agencies. She has been part of the district since 2008 and she has never “heard a complaint about our volunteer program that we have in the district. We encourage people to come and help us volunteer and provide things that maybe a teacher, staff member or monitor can not completely take care of on a daily basis.”

“My hope [and] my dream for our community is that all of our community members see themselves represented in the decisions that we make,” Barnard concluded. “I am hopeful that the community will be happy with the resolution [and that it] will keep things status quo because I do think it incorporates all of the community voices that we heard very well.”

To watch the full meeting from Jan. 29, visit bit.ly/3vOB4Ec. The DSISD Board of Trustees is scheduled to meet next at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 20.