Billionaires Love This School Policy. Many Regular Parents Hate It.

"I've been voting Republican my whole life. I'm superconservative," the Pine Tree superintendent, Steve Clugston, tells the camera in an Instagram reel. "I'm going to tell you what: When Greg Abbott sold us out to the billionaires and sold out our schools, I'm done with his leadership." In the Texas governor's race, Clugston is voting for Abbott's Democratic opponent, State Representative Gina Hinojosa.

The Pine Tree public school district is in the bright red small city of Longview in East Texas, between the big cities of Dallas and Shreveport, La. A majority of its 4,400 students are economically disadvantaged. When I caught up with Clugston on Friday, hours before the Pine Tree football team trounced its opponents under the lights, he was at his farm. "My wife's a teacher. My daughter's a teacher. My son-in-law's a teacher. Both my sisters are teachers. My brother-in-law's a retired superintendent. So I'd say education's kind of in our blood," he told me over the phone.