It seems the height of irony, maybe even hypocrisy, to tell a group of veterans they can’t pray at a Veterans Day presentation.

Yet, that’s what happened Monday at an elementary school in eastern Pennsylvania.

L.B. Morris Elementary School in Jim Thorpe has traditionally included prayer during its annual Veterans Day presentation, but this year the school notified Gil Henry, chaplain for the local VFW and American Legion posts, that prayer would not be allowed.

Henry, a U.S. Army veteran, boycotted Monday’s ceremony. So did other veterans, according to the Lehighton Times News.

“It breaks my heart,” Henry said. “From what I understand, they’ve been doing this program since right after World War II. Some of the guys are going to go do the program, and I respect that. But on principle, I can’t do it. I won’t do it.”

Jim Thorpe schools solicitor Gregory Mousseau said the Freedom From Religion Foundation, based in Madison, Wis., notified the district it had received a complaint from a parent that Henry had offered an invocation and closing prayer in 2012, which “inflicted unlawful prayer on school children.”

The Supreme Court has consistently ruled school-sponsored prayer is unconstitutional, and Mousseau said the district won’t violate the Constitution.

The senior staff attorney at the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Rebecca Markert, says prayers alienate nonreligious members of the school and misleads children into believing only religious people serve in the military, when about 23 percent of military personnel identify as having no religious preference.

“These prayers further perpetuate the myth that there are no ‘atheists in foxholes’ and that the only veterans worth memorializing are Christians,” Markert wrote in a complaint to the school district.

The point is well taken. Maybe there are a few atheists among the devout in foxholes, and the Constitution protects the few from the will of the majority.

Veterans who risked their lives defending the Constitution are bound, like the rest of us, by the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Constitution — and the court consistently has ruled no public school can compel or coerce a student to participate in a religious exercise.

But there are sensible solutions. One might be to dismiss pupils, with their parents’ permission, to attend a presentation off school grounds.

Better yet, designate Veterans Day as a school holiday, as is done in Butler, and conduct a community Veterans Day ceremony in the middle of town.

Our military veterans offer a vital lesson about faith, courage and patriotism, and young people need to hear it. While it’s unfortunate that the faith element of their lesson cannot be shared in the public school setting, faith cannot — and should not — be omitted from their account.