Attorneys tell me Cañon School District may be violating the law by allowing Family Church to rent its gym for a mere $5 a service

Jul 30, 2024

A public school district in Arizona has been giving a sweetheart deal to a local church, allowing it to rent space at an elementary school for next to nothing, essentially forcing taxpayers to subsidize the cost of usage.

All of this is taking place in Black Canyon City, about 20 miles north of Phoenix. There’s only one school in the area, Cañon Elementary School, which serves kids from kindergarten through 8th grade. In 2023, that school had just 131 students total. Small town with a total population of about 3,000. Very rural. The sort of place where the school board doesn’t get much scrutiny.

But the rules that apply to all public school districts still apply here, and that means outside organizations can always rent space in the buildings provided they follow the district’s rules.

According to the current rental contract offered by the Cañon School District, the fees are supposed to cover “custodial or school personnel services, utility costs, and equipment usage fee, if applicable.” That makes sense. Consider this: If a church wants to rent the gym or cafeteria on a Sunday morning, they’re using lights, bathrooms, water, heating or air conditioning, etc. The district has to be compensated for all that wear and tear, and the rental price is supposed to account for all that.

At a neighboring school district, a church renting a high school auditorium would be expected to pay $58/hour for the space, $60.50/hour for utilities, and $35/hour for custodial staff.

At Cañon Elementary, the prices are very different. And much, much lower: Any group wanting to rent space has to pay a mere $12.50/hour for the space, $20.00/hour if they use the kitchen, and a flat fee of $15.00 if they use the sound system.

(Follow above article link to view original article with photos/PDFs.)

There’s no way that covers the amount needed to reimburse the district… But let’s do some back-of-the-envelope math: If a church uses the space for 5 hours on a Sunday and 3.5 hours on a Wednesday night, that amounts to an average of just over $53 per service. If the church holds those two services for 49 weeks a year, that works out to $5,206.25 coming into the district.

That’s the deal that Family Church BCC (Black Canyon City) should have been given last year when they rented the elementary school’s gymnasium and annex room for those exact times.

But according to the contract they actually signed, and which I was able to obtain, Superintendent Angela E. Jangula gave them the space for a grand total of $5 per service.

Just $5. For every service in 2024.

The church wrote a single check to the district for a whopping $490.

While the church says in the contact that they will use their own sound equipment and clean the bathrooms, that doesn’t account for the electricity, water, trash, or heating/air. It’s hard to believe that what the church is bringing to the table makes up for what the district is losing by giving them this cheap rental fee.

Why on earth would a public school district that’s strapped for cash give this kind of deal to an outside group? They’re missing out on nearly $5,000 that they could be getting for the rental! And that’s just this year alone!

I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that school board president Jeannie Glover also happens to be the pastor’s wife…

Now, a group of self-described “concerned taxpayers" are asking the school board, the superintendent, and the county supervisor to fix this blatant act of unequal treatment. In a letter obtained by Friendly Atheist, the taxpayers lay out their concerns:

    The rising cost to continue to heat, to cool, and to have custodial staff maintain the buildings at CES on behalf of these renters, regardless if they are in charge of cleaning the bathrooms. Churches and religious groups should not be receiving a preferred rate (although they may qualify for a nonprofit rate– which is not reflected in the district's fee schedule). Many districts are adopting a sliding scale, in which they charge the least to groups directly serving school-age children and the most to community groups serving an adult population. Churches renting schools on weekends fall into the latter category.

    CES district's established facility fee schedule reflects $12.50 an hour– a reasonable amount to cover all associated costs of heating, cooling, wear and tear, incidentals, trash disposal etc. FC is not charged per hour, but instead they pay $5.00 per use. This nominal fee of $5.00 per use does not cover costs to cool or heat the gymnasium or any other room being utilized, let alone the wear and tear on the facility during the 98 days a year FC utilizes the facilities. 

    FC paid $490.00 to use CES for the year of 2024 ($5.00 x 98 days). If the distrtict's fee schedule was complied with, FC would have paid $5,206.25, as each use is an average of 4.25 hours. CES and Black Canyon City's taxpayers should not be covering costs associated with FC, as any extra monies the district has should be used to serve all of CES students and staff, not just the ones that are a part of FC's congregation. Therefore, we are unwillingly tithing our tax dollars to cover the yearly deficit of $4,716.25 which would essentially define FC as state-subsidized. This is a staggering figure of a deficit of $18,856.00 over the 4 years FC has been using CES. 

That last bit deserves repeating: The taxpayers are effectively subsidizing this church thousands of dollars every year—and the students are ultimately the victims of that shift.

The taxpayers also say this subsidy violates the part of the Arizona Constitution that forbids public money from supporting religious worship.

They want the school board to take specific steps to rectify this problem, including raising the rent on the church so that they’re paying what any other similar group would be paying and demanding that the church “retroactively reimburse the taxpayer subsidy from the last 4 years.”

They also want the church to stop using the school’s address as its own: “[Cañon Elementary School] staff should not be involved with [Family Church’s] mail.”

Finally, they say any school board members associated with the church should abstain from voting on these issues because there’s a “direct conflict of interest.”

I have to say: Those are all extremely reasonable requests. It’s appalling that the district is letting the church take advantage of them like this. Several days ago, I emailed the superintendent and board members for their responses to many of these concerns, but they have not responded.

More than anything, I would like to know if any other group receives this reduced $5/day rate. The best case scenario for the district would be that they give everyone a reduced rate, but even that would be fiscally irresponsible. The worst case scenario is that this rate is only given to the church, which could invite a lawsuit.

When I asked one church/state separation group if any of this raised alarm bells, they told me it all looked very concerning:

“We’d need to investigate further, but at first glance this looks like Canon Elementary School District is likely giving the church special treatment that other secular community groups may not be receiving, which would be a violation of church-state separation,” said Ian Smith, staff attorney at Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “The Constitution requires public schools to allow religious groups engaging in religious activities to use school facilities on equal terms as other community groups.”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation also told me that they plan to send a letter and records request to the district sometime this week:

Based on the information that we have at this time, it does appear that the District is giving the church a sweetheart deal and that local taxpayers are essentially subsidizing the church's operation in violation of both the U.S. Constitution and Arizona's constitution, which prohibits using public money to support religious worship, exercise, or instruction. We will be asking the District to immediately end its preferential treatment of the church. The church should pay the same rate that any other group renting the school would pay. 

This isn’t over yet. And as more details come in, the district may find itself in serious legal peril.

On a side note, I was surprised to see this particular kind of insurance coverage in the documentation I saw for the church:

Gotta have all your bases covered, I guess…