Bruce Lear lives in Sioux City and has been connected to Iowa’s public schools for 38 years. He taught for eleven years and represented educators as an Iowa State Education Association regional director for 27 years until retiring. He can be reached at BruceLear2419@gmail.com 

If you ask an Iowa educator what they need to be successful, you’ll get a list of things like, time to prepare, no legislative attacks, parental support, adequate supplies, administrative backing, and adequate school funding. 

What’s in House File 884 won’t be on the list. That bill allows public school districts and charter schools to hire or allow volunteer or paid chaplains, with no qualification requirements except to pass a background check. Iowa House Republicans approved the legislation on March 26, and Republicans on the Senate Education Committee advanced it on April 3, making the bill eligible for debate in the full Senate. 

Before passage, House members amended the bill, adding this sentence: “The school cannot require or coerce a student to utilize services or support from the chaplain, and the chaplains cannot be used in lieu of a school counselor or guidance counselor.” (Senate Republicans plan another amendment, but its text is not available on the legislature’s website at this writing.)

Proponents of the bill claim public school chaplains would function like chaplains in legislatures, the military, or hospitals. Critics point out that those chaplains receive extensive training. They also highlight the need for separation of church and state; chaplains are just another way to force-feed one brand of Christianity to public school students.

I don’t remember any Iowa candidate campaigning for office in 2024 on the need for chaplains in public schools. We might have heard about their sheer terror of DEI and that Iowa universities were too “woke.”

But not a peep about chaplains.

Iowa schools have immediate needs.

The most pressing one is to know just how much public schools will be underfunded before school districts are required to certify their budgets on or before April 15. School board members and superintendents are holding their collective breaths as the budget axe hovers over their heads. 

Will they be an underfunded with a 2 percent increase to state funding per pupil, as Governor Kim Reynolds and Senate Republicans want? Or will state funding per pupil increase by 2.25 percent, as House Republicans want? Both figures will cause districts to lay off hundreds of teachers and support staff, even though our state already suffers from a shortage of both. 

The Republican disagreement over funding public schools is like a bully giving us a choice, “Do you want to be punched in the face or stomach?” Either way, we bleed.

But it’s not just about funding. Public schools also need to have the majority party stop micromanaging curriculum, by pretending if they attended third grade, they know how to teach it. They don’t.

Repeated attacks on public schools undermine the very foundation Iowa was built upon.

House File 884 raises more questions than it answers. Here are some unanswered questions that lawmakers need to answer before voting for this bill. Ask at local forums and in emails. Please demand answers.

• Will parents be notified if a student contacts a chaplain?
• What “services” will a chaplain provide?
• Are school chaplains mandatory reporters for child abuse?
• Will the chaplain be held to the same confidentiality standards as a licensed professional counselor?
• If a local school board wanted, could a chaplain provide a church service at the public school?
• Will the chaplain be indemnified by the school district if sued by a parent?
• Did any of you campaign on putting chaplains into public or charter schools?
• Will the chaplain be allowed to say a public prayer before a meal or at the beginning of the day? How would students opt out of that public prayer?
• Would the chaplain be allowed to say a public prayer before a sporting event?
• Do you believe in the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution? If so, how do you maintain the separation between church and state if this bill passes?
• If you’re a protestant, are you comfortable with a Catholic chaplain and vice versa?
• If you are Jewish, would you be comfortable with a Christian chaplain and vice versa?

Thomas Jefferson said it best in 1808: “Erecting a wall of separation between church and state is absolutely essential in a free society.” Let’s not tear the wall down.

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Editor’s note from Laura Belin: Seven House Republicans joined all Democrats present to vote against House File 884: Michael Bergan, Chad Ingels, Judd Lawler, Brian Lohse, Thomas Moore, Matthew Rinker, and Devon Wood.