the reading i’m doing for my thesis involves the deconfessionalisation (that sure is a word in english) of the quebec school...
the reading i’m doing for my thesis involves the deconfessionalisation (that sure is a word in english) of the quebec school system and it just reminded me that uh, until actually quite recently high schools had pastorale, which is basically a youth pastor integrated into public schools and the education system, with government funding and usually its own dedicated room and (optional) school activities. which is kinda uh, fucked up. not necessarily in its content (which in recent times i’m pretty sure was mostly harmless; a youth pastor with not that much emphasis on pastor) but in principle. do American schools have like, a youth pastor on staff? I don’t think so but uh, ours did. Because it was optional and my parents kept me pretty isolated from anything religious, I mostly just have the vague knowledge of its existence (and the cultural stereotype of the pastorale teacher being the “hey there, fellow kids” sort of person), but it’s the kind of thing where in the midst of secularism being a big topic here (largely because of secularism being instrumentalised by anti-immigrant people) we kinda forget about
this existed I believe until the early 2000s when the second wave of deconfessionalisation was actually fully carried out. it was around when i was a kid but my subconscious kinda retconned it into nonexistence/the distant past. quebec was already the least religious place in north america by the mid-80s so it’s a bit jarring, as an adult with a better knowledge of how attitudes to religion differ in the world, to remember that that was a thing.
To answer your question: no, American public schools definitely do not have a pastor on staff. That would be considered highly inappropriate. The US probably takes secular education more seriously than any other country, in terms of how stringent schools are about not funding or endorsing any particular religion.
American schools often have a “counselor” that can be an equivalent secular-pastoral role, though depending on the school their focus might range from social work to therapeutic care to college admissions and post-graduation employment.
There used to be some more state religion elements in American schooling – schools once led prayer and read Bible readings daily, though that was challenged and ultimately ended with a 1962 Supreme Court ruling. This was actually pretty significant, “school prayer” was really a dead issue but at least trotted out as a battle flag into the early 90s, taken as a condensed symbol of the secularization of America (though pressure against the practice really kicked off with Catholics bothered by its specifically Protestant character).
The question of how public schools celebrate Christmas, where Christian and American national mythology is intertwined, has also been an issue over time, and I remembered prayer or Christian invocations at the ritual openings of school events (incl. sports) as an issue in the 1990s.