The points you make are valid even if not accepted by the student and her religious beliefs.
But another reason I read sometime back from the school administration included the monetary factor in that they could find the students if they were on site and missing from the attendance count, thus raising their revenue stream for the day.
What they’re talking about is ADA (Average Daily Attendance). What appeared in the story has little to do with ADA. Every school day, at 10:00AM, schools take an official attendance record for that day. Over the year those numbers get tabulated and averaged to serve as the basis for state funding the NEXT school year. Yes, ADA plays a small role in this, but not much. All of the misinformation on education galls me since I spent years working in public ed. I’m not a big fan. After Columbine I led a district effort to make our schools as safe as reasonably possible. It is a full time task. About 15 years ago the legislature founded something called AEP - Alternative Education Program - in every district. The AEP law is a joke. The net effect is that criminals under age 18 got foisted off onto public school districts instead of the juvenile justice system. Every day I left work thanking God we didn’t have anybody killed or raped that day - student or staff. Things just got worse after 2005 when the criminal element from New Orleans hit Texas after Katrina.