ACLU Sues to Bar Lease of College Land to Church

The local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit Monday to halt a San Diego Community College District plan to lease land on the Miramar College campus to a school run by a Pentecostal church.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of 31 district employees and a taxpayer, claims that the plan violates the U.S. Constitution and the California Education Code by entangling the public school district with an organized religion.

It names as defendants the five district trustees, Chancellor Garland Peed and Miramar College President George Yee--but not Mira Mesa Christian School, which has a tentative agreement to move onto the campus early next year.

“Any time you allow this excessive entanglement, it’s the beginning of the erosion of the establishment clause (in the Constitution) that establishes the separation of church and state,” said Michael Crowley, a volunteer ACLU attorney.

The ACLU also is seeking the immediate removal of two portable classrooms that the school has stored on the Miramar College campus for two months, and asks that the district be paid rent for that period.

The controversy over the school has been simmering since late August, when faculty members returning from summer vacation found that the district had agreed to lease land to the school. Arguing that the lease was unconstitutional and would hinder efforts to promote the underdeveloped campus off Black Mountain Road, the faculty helped persuade the district to reconsider the agreement.

“We have a major identity crisis here,” Rick Matthews, an instructor at Miramar and one of the plaintiffs, said Monday. “People don’t know where our campus is. And (the Christian school) is not going to help our image at all.”

The lease proposal was sent to the county counsel’s office for review two months ago, but the district is still awaiting a legal opinion. Deputy County Counsel William Taylor did not return a reporter’s telephone call to his office Monday.

Peed said Monday that the district will take no action until it receives an opinion from Taylor, and the district would not seek compensation for storing the portable classrooms unless the plan is rejected by the county counsel’s office. The Rev. Ron Shires, pastor of Pentecostal Chapel of the Rock Church and administrator of the school, said he is willing to negotiate a rent payment for the storage of the portable classrooms.

But Peed said he believes that the plan is legal. He described the suit as a publicity-seeking maneuver by the faculty working against Trustees Louise Dyer and Dan Grady, who face reelection Nov. 4.

Peed said he is “suspicious” of the suit because one of the plaintiffs is Clarence Stanfield, president of the faculty senate at City College and a member of the group trying to oust Dyer and Grady.

Stanfield “is not even associated with Miramar College. I guess he’s just an interested citizen. And if you find someone who believes that, tell him I’ve got the Coronado Bridge for sale,” Peed said.

Shires has told the trustees that the school will teach the Bible along with other subjects to its expected enrollment of about 85 students. The children would be taught “creation science” but exposed to evolution as a theory, Shires has said.

The district two weeks ago asked Shires to remove the portable classrooms at his convenience, but he has taken no action because of the expense that would be involved in moving them back onto the campus if the lease is approved.

Shires said Monday that he has no plans to give up on the Miramar College site because he has been unable to find an alternative site and believes the state Education Code allows the lease.

“Mom and Pop don’t own any land out here in Mira Mesa. It’s all So-and-So Inc.,” Shires said. “And since I’m not a developer, it’s difficult for me to get in and talk to anybody.

“It sure would be nice to find someone who’s willing to sell some land.”

Shires said that the ACLU is wrong about the laws involved, and that the dispute has grown into a matter of principle.

“They’re saying that I can’t have that (land) because I’m a church. But the law says I can,” he said. “So if I back away from that, what kind of precedent do I set?”

If an alternative site is not found by next year, when the school must vacate two churches it is currently using, students may be taught in a school bus owned by the Chapel of the Rock, Shires said. Individuals have also offered their garages as schoolrooms, he said.