Sharing Space With Grace

Long before this week’s controversial Supreme Court decision, hundreds of public schools across Southern California had been renting out space to churches without fanfare or controversy.

Religious groups have rented space in 126 Los Angeles schools this year; Jehovah’s Witnesses alone used 61 schools as their sanctuaries in April. Sixty percent of the campuses in the Capistrano Unified School District turn into makeshift churches on Sunday mornings. And in Ventura, Sunday worship services are conducted in the county board of education facilities.

On Monday, the high court ruled that a Christian youth group in New York state has the right to meet at an elementary school after classes let out because other community groups were allowed to do the same.

The ruling was the latest in a decade-long string of decisions using the principle of free speech to allow students to practice religion at high school and college campuses.

One dissenter in Monday’s 6-3 ruling, Justice David H. Souter, warned the ruling would allow for “the remarkable proposition that any public school . . . must be opened for use as a church, synagogue or mosque.”

The California experience already fulfills that prophecy. Five years ago, the state modified its education code to give religious groups equal access to public-school campuses during off hours.

So far, the arrangements have gone so smoothly that perhaps the biggest problem was the time a school evicted a church because the Sunday-school kids were using the public kindergarten’s crayons.

At Bathgate Elementary School in Mission Viejo, Dottie Anderson, a fourth-grade teacher, said she was apprehensive when her church started holding Sunday services at her school three years ago. Church volunteers transformed her classroom into a Sunday school room and decked the school’s multipurpose room with flowers and Bibles.

By the third week, Anderson found that worshiping where she works had reinvigorated her teaching. That’s still true, even though her church moved to larger quarters at Capistrano Valley High School earlier this spring.

“I don’t look at work the same way anymore,” Anderson said. “It’s a place where I’ve done service for God, a place where we worship. It’s opened up a whole new avenue mentally and spiritually. I am a light in a dark world . . . and I carry that into the classroom.”

The phenomenon isn’t limited to public schools. A church in Irvine holds its Sunday worship inside Irvine City Hall and a Huntington Beach congregation worships in the city’s main library.

For young and financially struggling churches, public schools provide instant, inexpensive and expandable meeting space in an otherwise expensive real estate market. And church officials don’t have to cut through much red tape since the campuses don’t fall under city jurisdiction.

“Schools are wonderful for churches because people think of the school as a great place,” said Ed Salas, lead pastor of Tapestry Covenant Church that rents the gym at Raymond A. Villa Fundamental Intermediate School in Santa Ana. “Great things happen in schools.”

Harry Schwartzbart of the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State objects. Churches in public schools “can present the appearance that the school is endorsing one religion,” he said. “The government must be absolutely neutral on the subject.”

State legislation and court rulings have defined neutrality as allowing religious groups into public institutions if other organizations also are allowed.

“We expect and hope school districts will continue to recognize the value of their religious institutions in the community and provide them with a sensitive accommodation,” said Brad Dacus, president of Pacific Justice Institute, a legal firm that provides free assistance to religious groups. “Sometimes public facilities are the only alternative for a church or synagogue that wants to start.”

The recent decision concerns some legal experts, who say it erodes the separation of church and state.

“Some would argue that this is just another form of subsidizing religion,” said Rob DeKoven, a law professor at California Western School of Law, who specializes in education law. “The schools can’t make money, and students may see that having a religious group on campus is an endorsement of that religion.

“It seems to me you could get to a level that it’s so hard to distinguish between the religious role and the education role that the public school is entwined with religion.”

William H. Swatos Jr., with the Florida-based Religious Research Assn., said the history of churches using campuses for services is as old as public schools themselves.

What is new, he said, is the long-term use of schools by churches that may have no intention of building their own institution.

“It’s not the building that makes the church,” said Cindy Globus, a teacher at Bathgate Elementary, who attended services at her school until the church moved to larger quarters this spring. “It’s the people, the fellowship, the worship. You kind of ignore your surroundings. You’re there for the heart of the matter.”

State law prohibits school districts from profiting from the rental agreements. But some districts charge five or six times as much as others.

In Santa Ana, Tapestry Covenant Church, which has 100 worshipers, pays $175 per week. One city over, the 200-member Church at Tustin Ranch ponies up $1,200 per week to use Tustin Unified’s Pioneer Middle School.

In many districts, those fees may be going up, as rising energy costs and pay increases to custodians are factored into rental rates. Capistrano Unified raised its rates last month; Tustin Unified may follow suit.

So far, most of the conflict between schools and churches has occurred on individual campuses and involves housekeeping.

“A guy like me is nothing but headaches to the principal,” said Doug Webster, pastor of Mountain View Church in Mission Viejo. “We’re doing ministry in the teachers’ living room. We try to be as thoughtful as possible.”

Pastor Chris Gleason, whose Living Hope church meets in a Capistrano district elementary school, gives gifts to the teachers, including a back-to-school basket with papers, pencils and pens.

“We’ve worked really hard to build a good relationship with the school,” Gleason said. “We want to be a blessing to them.”

Churches tend to be the most respectful of tenants, said Dan Crawford, head of facilities for the Capistrano Unified. But over the years, a few problems have cropped up.

One church was asked to leave a campus a few years ago after Sunday school classes repeatedly messed up kindergarten classrooms. Teachers would return on Monday and find that district-purchased crayons, papers and pencils had been used and strewn about the classroom.

“Over three or four months, I gave them notice and they did not comply,” Crawford said. “I had to ask them to vacate the classroom.”

There is one other thing churches absolutely cannot do during worship services on public-school campuses: serve wine, even Communion wine. Serving alcohol is forbidden on a public campus, district officials said.

“I can’t tolerate that,” said Crawford. “They’d better be using grape juice.”