Unfortunately, what you see happening here are school officials who have become so gun shy about separation of church that they chose to err on what they felt was the side of caution. I’ve gotta believe they feel they are under the microscope and thus fear public outcry and ensuing lawsuits from secular activists waiting to pounce on them.
Nowadays, teachers have to think twice before saying, “Heaven forbid” or “Oh my God” because someone might get offended. Don’t even think of saying the Pledge of Allegiance with “under God” in it because someone will take you to court. It’s turned into a joke, but it isn’t funny. Our urban public schools have been steadily going downhill since the Seventies (which bore the direct result of the Sixties) and nonsense like this is but a small part of why.
We descriptively term decades once they end (e.g. the “Roaring Twenties”, the “Fabulous Fifties”). Well, the Sixties should have been coined the “Psychotic Sixties”. MLK aside, no decade has ever done more to totally screw up this country, and we are still feeling its activist effects today. May God help us.