At the July 21 School District of Lancaster (SDoL) School Board meeting, Vice President and Facilities Committee Director Michael Rowen said that his committee was recently presented with a request from Lancaster’s Unitarian Universalist Church to rent the McCaskey East auditorium and cafeteria for a service. According to Rowen, this request sparked a significant and “on-going” discussion regarding the School’s parameters for rental use.
Rowen explained that, although the School already rents facility space to outside organizations, the permitted uses are fairly narrow: “We do rent out our facilities to different groups that want to use it, [but] at this point, one of the criteria is that it is always based in childrens’ use—that it would benefit our kids.” Rowen later qualified that the School does also rent to community groups like the Lancaster Recreation Commission which may not always be running child-related programs.
But the prospect of opening up these arrangements to religious organizations generates a new conversation, Rowen said: “At this point, we’re having an on-going discussion as to how much we want to expand that, and it becomes an interesting conversation when you get into the issue of churches—do you do that or not.” Currently, other districts in Lancaster County, including Penn Manor, allow religious groups to rent their facilities.
The SDoL’s current and approaching financial challenges have provided a strong motivation for the Board to take this discussion seriously. “We can make money by renting our facilities,” Rowen granted, “And, as we all know, we need all the money we can get. And, it’s the analogy to using advertising and having ‘Pepsi’ all over the school, and how far you want to go in that direction.”
At the present time, the District has not granted permission for the Universalist Church to make use of McCaskey’s facility; however, Rowen said, they are still “looking into” the nature of the Church’s proposed use, and whether it may qualify as “child-based.”
