But Competitive Bidding Suggested : College Scuttles Church School Lease

The chancellor of the San Diego Community College District has canceled a plan to lease land at Miramar College to a school run by a Pentecostal church, and ordered the school to remove its portable classrooms from the campus immediately.

But Chancellor Garland Peed, in a letter to the church’s pastor, invited the church to compete with other organizations for a lease if the district opens a parcel on the campus to bidding.

Peed’s Nov. 7 letter to the Rev. Ron Shires, pastor of the Chapel of the Rock and administrator of Mira Mesa Christian School, came 11 days after the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit to thwart the proposed lease. The ACLU claimed that a lease would violate the U.S. Constitution and the California Education Code by entangling the public school district with an organized religion.

After receiving advice from the county counsel’s office, Peed agreed, saying that Shires’ plan to teach a religiously oriented curriculum “raises questions as to possible violations” of those laws.

But Peed also noted that “the San Diego Community College District is considering opening for competitive bid the use of a parcel of property on the Miramar College campus,” and invited Shires to submit a bid if the plan is approved by the board of trustees in December.

Michael Crowley, a volunteer attorney for the ACLU, said Peed’s new tactic is unconstitutional and promised to pursue the lawsuit, filed Oct. 27 in Superior Court.

“Putting that out to bid does not change it one bit,” Crowley said. “There’s no exception in the First Amendment for putting something out to bid.”

Peed said that the practice is “perfectly legal” under the Education Code and has been used by other public school districts. The Community College District has in recent years considered and rejected plans to raise development funds by leasing the open land at Miramar College.

Under Peed’s new plan, the district would identify a parcel of land, declare it surplus and offer a lease for several years. The terms of the lease would be written to exclude housing developers or others considered undesirable for the campus, he said.

Shires was out of town and could not be reached for comment Wednesday. Ed Simpson, accountant for the Chapel of the Rock, said that the church would comply with the order to move two portable classrooms stored on the Miramar campus since Aug. 18 and pay $1,000 in storage fees requested by Peed.

Simpson said that the church has not yet received Peed’s letter. Any legal opposition to Peed’s cancellation of the proposed lease would be up to Shires, Simpson said.

The letter represents the latest twist in a three-way struggle between the district, its faculty and Shires’ church that began in August, when the trustees tentatively agreed to lease land on the mostly barren campus to Shires for $1,250 per month--apparently without realizing that his school would offer a highly religious curriculum.

Faculty returning from vacation in August voted to protest the decision, saying the inclusion of a Pentecostal school on their campus would destroy their efforts to publicize the largely unknown college.

Shires, however, said he believed the law allows the school district to accept his school. Because land prices in Mira Mesa are so high, Shires has no other alternative for housing his 85-student school, which must vacate its current homes in two churches by March.

In October, the ACLU became involved, demanding that the two classrooms be removed and that Shires pay the district a fair-market price for storing them at Miramar College since August.