Should mandatory (or voluntary) prayer be permitted in public schools?

Questions about prayer and religion are tricky questions to answer. I think that if church and state are to be separate, the act of mandatory or voluntary prayer should not be permitted. There could much be debate about this, but the “law of the land” sort of speak, is that there is a separation of church and state so we should follow that.
This does not mean that at a privately funded school, that school could make their own choices about prayer. This means that if a Private Catholic wants to mandate prayer for its students that they should in fact be allowed to make this choice.