After public outcry, a Mormon seminary will not be built at an Arizona public school
Legal experts said the arrangement between the Vail Unified School District and the LDS Church was blatantly unconstitutional
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Weeks after a public school district in Arizona signed a contract to build a Mormon “seminary” on campus, officials announced that the contract has been canceled at the request of the Mormon Church.
It’s a stunning end to what was clearly a violation of church/state separation—and it may have come due to the pushback, both in the community and via legal organizations, that appeared to take district officials by surprise.
I wrote about the situation earlier this month, but here’s the rundown of what happened at Cienega High School, part of the Vail Unified School District, just southeast of Tucson.
Children of Mormon parents are supposed to attend religious classes—which they call “seminary”—each day during the school year. Some kids do it before school; others do it during school as part of Released Time. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints 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.
It would be a lot easier, Mormon community members felt, if students could just walk across campus.
That’s when the Mormon Church came 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. Taxpayers wouldn’t be on the hook for anything and it would make it easier for local LDS families to send their children to seminary either before or during school.
About a month ago, the Vail School District Governing Board unanimously approved the contract between the two sides. It specified the ten-year lease and said the Mormon Church would rent out the facility between 6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. each school day. Outside of that, the district could use the space however it wanted.
How much would it cost? A mere $100 per month, with an additional $500 per month to cover utilities and maintenance. The district would also give the LDS Church four parking spaces near the new building.
It was easy to see why the school district liked this arrangement. The Church was paying for a building that offered a benefit to some students at no cost to the district itself. In some ways, it was 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.
But the legal problems in this situation were obvious.
Unlike a church renting out an auditorium once a week, this arrangement involved a religious group purchasing property on campus specifically to promote their faith. It created a business arrangement between a public school district and a religion group that didn’t benefit the vast majority of students, who would be unable to use the space during school hours.
That’s why Secular AZ’s legal director Dianne Post sent the district a cease-and-desist letter, telling them why they shouldn’t go through with this deal.
Among other things, Post said 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 would get took them away from “teachers, students, and parents who are the taxpayers and consumers of this public good.”
Even if there was a way to rationalize all that, the constitutional concerns loomed larger. Post explained 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.”
Finally, there was nothing stopping the LDS Church from paying for a new building a block away from campus. So why weren’t they just doing that?
In short, Post wrote, “the benefit to [the Mormon Church] far surpasses the benefit to the District,” and that’s why this whole arrangement was illegal. Post added that a district administrator told a local news outlet that this deal had been in the works for 13 years. And yet there was no public record of those talks before this deal was quickly proposed and approved.
She concluded:
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.
After she sent her letter, the Freedom From Religion Foundation sent one of their own telling the district to rip up the contract.
That letter from attorney Samantha Lawrence said “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 mentioned that the deal sent “a clear message that [the school district] favors students who are members of the Mormon Church.”
And now there’s a happy update to this story.
On Tuesday, the Vail School District announced the deal would not be going forward at the request of the Church:
We would like to provide an update on a matter of community interest involving the agreement between the LDS Church and the Vail School District regarding the donation of funds for the construction of a community room, and the associated lease of that facility to the Church during specific times outlined in the agreement.
Yesterday, we met with representatives of the Church to discuss the status of the agreement. Earlier this evening, we received formal written notice from the Church indicating their decision to exercise their contractual right to terminate the agreement.
In short, this action by the Church brings the lease and donation agreement to a close.
The Vail School District works every day to fulfill our motto and mission, “Where education is a community effort” We strive to find innovative ways to respond to the needs and requests of parents and our community.
There was no apology. No mention of any wrong-doing. No indication that the threat of lawsuits were the primary reason the contract had to be destroyed. Just an announcement that the deal was off.
More importantly, there’s no indication that the school board members—at least two of whom graduated from Mormon-affiliated colleges—have any clue how serious a problem this was. There’s no reason to believe they won’t do this again in the future.
But it’s not like those board members weren’t feeling the pressure. On April 16, Superintendent John Carruth met with members of the community to hear them out, and the pushback was fierce enough that he told the crowd it was possible the school board could “walk [the deal] back.”
Retired teachers, residents and parents of students and former students said they felt enraged, frustrated and disenfranchised with how the agreement with the church was carried out.
Carruth told them that while the agreement with the church has been signed, the district is "functionally in a paused state as far as moving forward with design or construction or any of the other things."
…
Throughout the almost three-hour meeting, Carruth apologized to the public for how the agreement between the district and the LDS was pursued and executed. He said that he underestimated the public's concern.
He said he will bring back the concerns to the board, which is also engaging with the church and the district's legal advisers about how to proceed.
A lot of those community members specifically mentioned church/state separation as the reason they were opposed to this deal. They didn’t buy the argument from the district’s lawyers that everything was kosher. (Indeed, Secular AZ’s Dianne Post sent a follow-up letter to the district’s lawyers rebutting all their arguments.)
So now we’re just left with questions and confusion. The district hasn’t issued any further details on what transpired between board members and LDS leaders. For all we know, the Mormon Church will just try this gambit with another school district that doesn’t know any better.
But this particular deal failed because local community members found out what was happened and immediately took action against it. They spoke out at a public meeting and got the media to cover this story.
Jeanne Casteen, the Executive Director of Secular AZ, said in a statement to me last night that this was a “critical win.”
“This is a critical win not just for one district, but for all public school districts in Arizona,” said Jeanne Casteen, Executive Director of Secular AZ. “Religious organizations should not be building places of worship or providing religious instruction on taxpayer-funded property. We are proud of the tireless legal work led by Dianne Post and our legal team that made this reversal happen.”
…
“This would have blurred the lines between church and state in a deeply inappropriate way,” said Dianne Post. “This is a public high school, not a platform for religious proselytizing. We had to act—and we did.”
The district should really be issuing a public statement of gratitude to the community for preventing them from making this huge mistake. Their board members failed, their lawyers failed, their superintendent failed, and the Mormon Church was eager to take full advantage of the district’s ignorance… until people who understand church/state separation decided they weren’t going to let this happen without a fight.
And sometimes, when you fight, you win.
(Portions of this article were published earlier)
This particular subset should fire their lawyers, not because they wanted to violate the constitutions, but because they failed to take into account people who respect separation of church abd state.
"And yet there was no public record of those talks before this deal was quickly proposed and approved"
French word du jour : backchich/dessous-de-table
"He said that he underestimated the public's concern."
Those pesky people who dare to ask him to uphold the law he has sworn to follow. Quel toupet !
Yes, that's right. Arizona has a more stringent church/state separation Constitution than the federal document. One may ask, why does Arizona have a school voucher system, then? The answer is 'the camel's nose'. This group thought that the camel was almost in the tent, and they could get away with this. The Mormon church is in every part of our government here. Just look at the way the Mormon church is referred to, 3 times in that press release: "The Church". That is not them simply referring to 'A' church or the entity they are talking about as 𝑎𝑛𝑦 church; this is how people refer to the LDS. It is THE church. This push back makes my heart feel proud of my fellow Arizonans. But we clearly have a long way to go. The school voucher system has won in the courts despite the obvious constitutional conflict.