Yes, Jay, even I was shocked by your report of “prayer police” in Kentucky.  However, having heard these tales in the past on so many occasions, I got myself under control and immediately realized that many facts are missing.

Students do have a right to pray in schools so long as it is not promoted or orchestrated by the school itself or teachers, administrators or other school officials.  It is important to note that even you and the ACLJ, however, have never said that the “right” is so broad that praying can interrupt school activities.  I mean, you wouldn’t support having a student say: “Look, I’ll be skipping the algebra test this period to have a quality conversation with God.”  At least, I hope you would not.

Here at the East Jessamine Middle School, students were trying to deal
with a real tragedy in the death of a parent.  These youngsters do have
the right to pray individually or together during a non-instructional
period (unless the school is helping them by setting up a special place
or rearranging schedules just to accommodate one group of religious
students).  From the limited media reports on this issue, the
administration tends to describe what went on differently that you
did.  School officials say they were simply trying to make sure
students got to class on time and that there were no calls to arrest
any student.  Obviously, some students see this differently.

It
is my experience with examining similar claims in the past that calls
of “anti-religious bias” are nearly uniformly proven to be erroneous. 
You may remember the phony controversies about a Tennessee student who,
according to your side, got a failing grade for writing a report about
Jesus. There was a lot more to the story, and she lost in court. Or you might recall the good folks in Dodgeville, Wisc., who were falsely accused a few years ago by Jerry Falwell’s attorneys of altering Christmas carols to make them secular.

This
new outrage of yours is likely to be a “he said/he said/she said/she
said” situation.  What really went on in Nicholasville? I wasn’t there
and neither were you. But if you believe you have a strong case that
students’ rights were violated, you can always file a lawsuit and seek
redress. We have both done plenty of those.  As for now, count me
skeptical leaning toward total disbelief.

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