In 2013, North Carolina’s right-wing legislature enacted a school voucher plan called the Opportunity Scholarship, offering public funding for parents to send their children to private schools. There was just one problem: people didn’t want to use it.

Demand for Opportunity Scholarships (OS) consistently lagged far behind available funds until 2021, when the legislature allocated half a million (now one million) annual dollars just to market the program. But even with this generous advertising budget fueled by tax money the state’s public schools desperately need, the OS program struggled to attract parents. In fact, as of last spring, nearly 70 percent of polled North Carolina voters had no idea what Opportunity Scholarships are. The General Assembly even felt the need to include a provision in its anti-LGBTQ “parents’ rights” bill forcing public schools to educate families about private school vouchers.