A public school district in Arizona agreed to build a Mormon seminary on campus
Legal experts say the arrangement between the Vail Unified School District and the LDS Church is blatantly unconstitutional
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A public high school in Arizona has pledged to build a literal Mormon seminary on campus. A contract just signed by the school board and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints says the LDS Church will pay for the construction, then lease it for ten years in order to facilitate their desire to indoctrinate students.
All of this is happening at Cienega High School, part of the Vail Unified School District, just southeast of Tucson.
The reason this is happening is because children of Mormon parents are supposed to attend religious classes—which they call “seminary”—each day during the school year. Sometimes, in order to avoid interfering with school, the classes begin before 6:00 a.m. The LDS Church does this to make sure teenagers are getting religious indoctrination at a time when many kids that age might start to question and leave their faith. For students at Cienega, that means traveling at least 15 minutes away (and back) because that’s where the nearest LDS Church is. (Update: I said earlier the nearest church was 30 minutes away, but I have since been informed it’s closer than that, and I have rewritten the previous sentence to reflect that.)
It also means letting students out of class for Released Time, during the school day, so they can attend LDS religious classes is a no-go because of the distance.
That’s why the Mormon Church recently went to the school district with a suggestion: They would pay for their own building on the campus of Cienega High School and promise to rent it out for the next ten years. That means taxpayers wouldn’t be on the hook for anything. It would make it easier for local LDS families to send their children to seminary either before or during school. And hell, the Mormon Church has plenty of money to throw around.
Last week, the Vail School District Governing Board unanimously approved the contract between the two sides.
Administration has been working with representatives of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (CHC) to identify space that CHC can utilize for their Release-Time Seminary Classes at Cienega High School. After a thorough evaluation, there simply isn’t a suitable and available space that meets the needs of CHC. As such, the District has been working with CHC to develop an agreement by which CHC will donate all of the necessary funding to the District required to design and construct a community room space on the Cienega Campus.
The resulting facility will be owned and operated by the District as a community room space. As a part of the donation agreement, the District will enter into a ten-year usage lease with an option to extend another ten year lease period by which the CHC will lease the facility on all weekdays between 6:00AM to 6:00PM. Outside of the terms of the lease agreement, the District will utilize the facility for other school programs or community needs. The CHC will also pay the District a monthly fee to cover rental, utilities, and maintenance costs for the duration of the agreement.
In short, the LDS Church is paying for a building that includes a single classroom, a couple of offices, and a restroom. The contract says they’ll cover all the costs for this and rent it for 12 hours a day each weekday for the next ten years (and possibly longer). The school district can use it for whatever they want outside of those times; after all, it’s technically their property.
The only interaction between the two sides beyond all that would just be collecting the payments each month. The rent comes out to $100 per month, with an addition $500 per month to cover utilities and maintenance. (The district would provide “water, electricity, sewer, janitorial, and maintenance services.”) There are also a few other arrangements regarding parking spaces, snow removal by the district, and insurance policies paid for by the Church. The Church also has the right to put up “overtly religious signage or artwork without the District’s advance approval, provided such installation is temporary.” They’ll also be allowed to put up a permanent sign outside the building that says “donation made possible by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”
In some ways, this is no different from what many cash-strapped or brand-new churches already do at public schools when they rent a large auditorium for Sunday morning services. They pay whatever the district’s rental price is, they’re allowed to put up temporary signs, and they get to use the space.
It’s easy to see why the school district likes this agreement. The Church pays for a building that offers a benefit to some students at no cost to the district itself. The superintendent implied this was a no-brainer:
“We serve 15,000 students, we have 23 different schools. We have 2 million square feet of space in our school district, and we're talking about adding a classroom and some storage space that's being donated," [Superintendent John] Carruth said.
But the legal problems here seem obvious.
Unlike a church renting out an auditorium once a week, this arrangement involves a religious group purchasing property on campus specifically to promote their faith. It creates a business arrangement between a public school district and a religion group that doesn’t benefit the vast majority of students, who would be unable to use the space.
If this were allowed, you can imagine how many wealthy megachurches throughout America would be happy to pay for mini-churches on public school grounds—hell, just think of all the GoFundMe campaigns that would spring up for those buildings.
That’s why Secular AZ’s legal director Dianne Post recently sent the district a cease-and-desist letter, telling them why they should not go through with this deal.
Among other things, Post says the fair-market cost to rent that amount of space in Southern Arizona should be $27,300, not $1,200. Also, the four parking spaces the Church will get necessarily take those spots away from “teachers, students, and parents who are the taxpayers and consumers of this public good.”
And while seminary typically occurs early in the morning, since the LDS Church would have use of this space for 12 hours a day, there’s nothing stopping them from offering the same classes during the school day, similar to how LifeWife whisks away public school students for Released Time classes. Even if Released Time is legal, it creates all kinds of problems for students and teachers.
It’s the constitutional concerns, though, that the district should really be concerned about. Post explains that the Arizona Constitution includes a Blaine Amendment that says very clearly “no public money or property shall be appropriated for or applied to any religious worship, exercise, or instruction, or to the support of any religious establishment.”
What is this whole arrangement if not a public gift for the benefit of one religion? After all, there’s nothing stopping the LDS Church from paying for a new building a block away from campus. But they’re specifically building on a school campus because that comes with all kinds of perks for the faith.
Post writes:
The lease violates the Constitution’s gift clause in several ways:
1. $100/month for rent when it should be $2,250 at minimum;
2. Free parking spaces;
3. $500 for all utilities, janitorial and maintenance;
4. Nothing for major repairs.This “deal” is clearly a gift to benefit the church and not the school.
In short, “the benefit to [the Mormon Church] far surpasses the benefit to the District,” and that’s why this whole arrangement is illegal. Post adds that a district administrator told a local news outlet that this deal had been in the works for 13 years. And yet there’s no public record of those talks before this deal was quickly proposed and approved.
That same administrator claimed this was no different from a Christian club meeting in the high school. But in that case, the Christian group is treated no differently from other school clubs. They don’t have a special space on campus that no one else is allowed to use.
Post concludes:
This project cannot proceed. You must cease and desist immediately. Too many legal problems exist to be able to move forward. The combined violations of federal and state constitutional law and state statute cannot be overcome. It is best for all concerned to move in a different direction.
Earlier this week, the Freedom From Religion Foundation sent its own letter to the district echoing what Post said earlier and telling the district to rip up this contract. That letter from attorney Samantha Lawrence says “As the Agreement details, the Board and District are explicitly expending public resources to support the church’s release-time instruction in direct violation of the Constitution.” She also notes that the deal sends “a clear message that [the school district] favors students who are members of the Mormon Church.”
There’s nothing stopping the Church from renting out meeting space in the building that already exists, just like everyone else. If they need a special Mormons-only holy space to meet, then they can build a new church in the area off-campus.
The idea that a public school district is working together with the LDS Church to build a religious center on campus is blatantly illegal and a lawsuit waiting to happen. When that happens, taxpayers will absolutely be on the hook for what’s happening here because you can bet the Mormon Church won’t cover those expenses at all.
By the way, at least two of the school board members graduated from Brigham Young University (President Allison Pratt) and BYU-Idaho (Callie Tippett). Various commenters online say that three or four of the five total board members are Mormons. That’s tangential to the larger issues here, but it might suggest why the Mormon Church thought it could purchase space in this particular school district.
The only way religion gains more converts is by indoctrinating children.
Absurdly unconstitutional. At least it used to be. The church group wanting to build their 'seminary' on public land needs to made aware of the fact rights are not matters of majority rule. I don't care how many Mormons live in that district, they have no right to do this. The 'no-brainer' part describes the elected officials willing to let this asinine project go forward just because they don't have to pay for it. It is never the responsibility of our secular government to backstop anyone's religion, and the public schools are sub-divisions of government.