An atheist group became suspicious that a local school district’s cozy relationship with a big Baptist church may amount to a school-to-Jesus pipeline.

So Stockton Area Atheists and Freethinkers submitted two Public Records Act requests to Lodi Unified School District probing its relationship with Lodi’s First Baptist Church.

“I think the primary concern is that the school district is unfairly blurring the line between separation of church and state,” said David Diskin, the group’s co-founder.

Lodi Unified’s superintendent says the school is merely partnering with good community citizens to help students, including disadvantaged kids.

The atheist group raises questions about several Lodi Unified programs and personnel. As well as, curiously, a big Winnebago RV that the school district sold to First Baptist at what appears to be far below market value.

The documents show:

• Staffers from the 180 Teen Center of Lodi are allowed into some middle and high schools to invite students to the teen center.

Neither they, their fliers, nor the teen center’s Facebook page mentions God or religion. This led many Lodi Unified staffers to believe 180 is secular, or at least a stand-alone outfit.

“It is my understanding that it’s separate entity,” said Lodi Unified’s Superintendent, Cathy Nichols-Washer.

It’s not. The 180 Teen Center is an “integrated auxiliary” of First Baptist Church. It’s a budget line item for First Baptist. It receives funding from other sources, and keeps its own bank accounts and payroll. But it is an arm of the church.

The teen center has a big picture of Jesus inside, a large cross and Bibles. It refers to its staffers as “missionaries.” Its founding Director Jake McGregor wrote, “The question I constantly asked in those early years was something like, “How can we get kids here, and how can we get them to meet Jesus here?”

McGregor is now a pastor at First Baptist Church. His wife is the teen center’s director.

Nichols-Washer responded with a statement saying the 180 people may be religious but, “The services provided to the District are not presented from the standpoint of any particular religion.”

She added that Lodi Unified has a diverse array of community partnerships, including with other churches.

Added Steve Newman, First Baptist Church’s senior pastor, “The teen center has programs that are secular, and programs that are religious in nature, just like the Salvation Army.”

Center staffers go camping with disadvantaged kids who have never seen ocean or mountains. They tutor students. They mentor at-risk kids, Newman said.

• In 2014 Lodi Unified sold a 35-foot 2004 Winnebago Adventurer to the teen center for $4,500. Online blue books list the value of the vehicle today as roughly between $28,700 to $34,550.

“I have to be honest,” said Jake McGregor, the founding director of the teen center. “When we went to make the purchase it seemed a great price to me.”

It was. In fact, it looks like a sweetheart deal or, in the parlance, a gift of public funds.

The sale was brokered by Neil Young, until this year director of personnel for Lodi Unified, now a school principal. Young is also a board member at First Baptist Church.

Young said the RV was a mobile computer lab that fell into disuse.

“I remember talking to Jake as we were driving by it, and I pointed it out it and I said, ‘I wonder if Lodi Unified would ever have an interest in selling that.’ So I connected Jake with the business department,” Young recalled.

Was an appraisal done? Were other buyers allowed to bid?

District officials say the records of the RV transaction are lost.

But, they say, the value was established by Huisman Auctions of Galt.

Huisman’s President, David Huisman, disagrees. “We never appraised that vehicle,” Huisman said.

Yet the sale may be lawful. Sometimes grant money requires any resale to be to a nonprofit. A restricted market could lower resale value — though probably not that much.

• The teen center provides Christian counselors to several mentoring programs such as Why Try. Why Try counselors help students make good choices about gangs, drugs and other pitfalls.

Lodi Unified paid First Baptist $111,769 over the past three fiscal years for counselors at seven schools, records show.

• Teen Center staffers plastered schools with posters advertising the Upwards Sports program. Church officials say the league is a wholesome sports program where parents cannot yell at referees and kids get equal playing time.

Googling Upwards Sports, one finds: “Our mission: Promoting the discovery of Jesus through sports.”

Sixth-grade teacher Julie Jensen objects. “We really don’t want religious people controlling our schools,” she said. “Schools are about teaching reality. These churches deny science, they deny history, they discriminate against women, they discriminate against gays and lesbians. I don’t want my kids hearing that.”

Pastor Newman counters that his people are good citizens sacrificing to help disadvantaged kids — doing good works, God’s work, but without proselytizing.

“If they conclude by the example that Christians are good people and they want to visit our church, that’s fine, that’s a good thing,” Newman added. “But we don’t preach to them.”

But it is not necessary to preach to violate the Establishment Clause. Another legal criterion is called “excessive entanglement.” Lodi Unified officials should check for it.

Contact columnist Michael Fitzgerald at (209) 546-8270 or michaelf@recordnet.com. Follow him at recordnet.com/fitzgeraldblog and on Twitter@Stocktonopolis.