Religion School Would Bid for Site at College

The head of a religiously oriented school said Tuesday that he would accept an invitation to bid for a site on the Miramar College campus despite a pending lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union and the opposition of the college’s faculty.

A plan to lease a site on the Miramar campus to Mira Mesa Christian School was canceled Nov. 7 by Garland Peed, chancellor of the San Diego Community College District. Peed said the proposed lease could violate the U.S. Constitution and the California Education Code by entangling church and state.

But Peed invited the Rev. Ron Shires, administrator of the school and pastor of the Pentecostal Chapel of the Rock, to compete with other organizations if the district’s trustees open a parcel for bidding. Peed claimed that the process is legal under a separate section of the Education Code.

“When it’s time to put it up for bid, I think I’ll try that,” Shires said Tuesday.

In the meantime, the ACLU will press a lawsuit in an effort to get a judge to prevent any lease of Miramar College land to Mira Mesa Christian School. The ACLU filed the suit Oct. 27, asking in addition that the Christian school remove two portable classrooms that have been stored on the campus since August and pay the district rent for storing them.

Peed “is making remonstrations that he’s going to violate the law once again under the smoke screen of putting it out to bid,” said Michael Crowley, volunteer attorney for the ACLU. “We will be there once again to keep him from violating the law.”

Shires responded that, “If they tried to nail us on the separation of church and state . . . I guess I’d go to court on that one.”

Shires said that he will remove the portable classrooms within a few weeks, but does not want to pay the district the $1,000 rent requested. He said that the rent reached $1,000 because the county counsel’s office delayed more than two months before offering Peed an opinion on the legality of the lease.