On a Friday evening in late September, Texas governor Greg Abbott continued his aggressive push for school vouchers at a high school football game in Dallas. At an event called Parents Matter Tailgate, he hopped on the bullhorn and said, “Tonight is a typical night in Texas — tonight is about football, family, fun, and freedom. One of the freedoms we believe in is the freedom of parents to choose what’s right for their child.”

It’s true that there’s nothing more typical of Texas than high school football. But the game Abbott chose to attend, between two private Christian academies, is not typical of a state where the vast majority of students are still enrolled in traditional public schools. If Abbott and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick succeed in enacting their radical privatization agenda, though, that could start to change pretty quickly. The policies they envision would siphon resources away from districts already weakened by underfunding, draining the lifeblood from communities — particularly among Texas’s large rural population. As one contributor to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram noted, subsidizing private education from the public coffers will shrink public school athletic budgets, and ultimately, extinguish those beloved Friday night lights.

After surviving a primary challenge bankrolled by the West Texas billionaires fueling his state’s hard-right turn toward Christian nationalism, Abbott announced that school choice would be a top priority for last spring’s legislative session. But like previous statewide voucher efforts, Abbott’s proposals died in the Texas House of Representatives, facing fierce opposition mainly from urban Democrats and rural Republicans, who recognize the threat to their local districts.