Prayer in Schools

I know a lot of people feel pretty strongly about whether or not prayer should be allowed in school. What I don't understand is what exactly do those in favor of prayer in school hope to achieve with prayer in school? Better yet, what do they hope to achieve with prayer in school that parents can achieve with prayer at home? If you want your child to pray, pray with them before you send them off to school instead of letting them watch a cartoon in the morning.

Personally I believe that religion is a private institution in that an individual needs no one else to communicate and have a relationship with God, whatever their religion may be. As such, a mandatory group prayer sounds more like a missionary crusade to convert\brainwash those that may be on a religious fence so to speak. I read a blog (sorry don't remember which one) that suggested placing students whose parents did not want them subjected to prayer in another intercomless room during the morning school prayer. So in this country of diversity, in this melting pot, we still want to pick out the onions or carrots. These kids will be singled out if such a situation were to occur. The blog goes on to say how 'neat' a muslim prayer is to hear (very belittling though I don't think the author intended it to be). So the options were to a)place kids in a holding room during the morning prayer, or b)say multiple prayers for all the various religions in the morning.

Odd, isn't this what church is for? Shouldn't school be used to teach the regular school subjects? With inadequate school budgets as it is, do we really need to allocate the limited time and funds on prayers which can (and should) be done at home?