Jefferson as a Public School Adminstrator

                                              Daveed Diggs as Jefferson on Broadway
 

Here is a little bit of history that makes you think about religion in the public schools and the Establishment Clause: 

Jefferson was the first school board president for the public schools in the District of Columbia. In fact, an historian of the District of Columbia public schools credits Jefferson as "the chief author of the first plan of public education adopted for the city of Washington.” Interestingly (perhaps devastatingly for those who revere Jefferson as a strict separationist), the first official report on file indicates that the principal books then in use in the District of Columbia public schools were the Bible and Watts Hymnal.

See Wilson, Eighty Years of the Public Schools of Washington-1805 to 1885, 1 RECORDS OF THE COLUMBIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY 122 (1897).

So, think about this when we read the school prayer cases and cases forbidding public schools from endorsing religion.