Gary VanDeaver, the former rural superintendent who fought private school vouchers in 2023 who was one of only two House Republicans to vote no when they passed in 2025, will take over the Texas Association of School Boards on Oct. 1.
The association’s board of directors announced the hire Sept. 22, one day after VanDeaver, R-New Boston, resigned his House District 1 seat. TASB is a nonprofit, founded in 1949, that trains and advises the elected trustees who govern Texas school districts, which serve more than 5.5 million students. It also sells those districts legal, policy and insurance services, and it lobbies the Legislature on their behalf.
The move puts one of the most visible public-school voices in the Republican caucus at the head of the organization that speaks for the state’s school boards. It comes less than four months before the 90th Legislature convenes, with school safety, special education and a push to ban taxpayer-funded lobbying all on the table.
“My entire career reflects my belief that a strong public education system represents the best shot for all Texas children to achieve the American dream,” VanDeaver said in the association’s announcement.
VanDeaver spent 33 years in schools before entering politics. He started as a vocational agriculture teacher, became a principal, and was superintendent of New Boston ISD from 2005 to 2014, according to the Texas Tribune. He holds a bachelor’s degree in agricultural education from what is now East Texas A&M University, and a master’s degree and doctorate in educational administration from the same school.
He won the House seat in 2014 by defeating Republican incumbent George Lavender in the primary. His district covers Bowie, Cass, Lamar, Morris and Red River counties in the state’s rural northeast corner. He served on the Appropriations and Public Education committees in his early terms, and in 2023 he chaired the Appropriations subcommittee that writes the education portion of the state budget, committee minutes show. In 2025, Speaker Dustin Burrows made him chair of the Public Health Committee, where he oversaw legislation on rural health care.
His defining votes were on vouchers, which supporters call school choice. In November 2023, during the fourth special session Gov. Greg Abbott called to pass them, VanDeaver was one of 21 Republicans who joined House Democrats to strip education savings accounts from House Bill 1. The amendment passed 84-63, the Tribune reported.
He explained his reasons in terms of his district. “I’m just philosophically not in favor of vouchers primarily because of the district I represent,” he told the Tribune that month. The district had only five accredited private schools across its five counties, the paper found. He also warned that in a downturn, lawmakers would find it “much easier to lower the basic allotment,” the per-student base of school funding, than “to cut a student’s” education savings account.
Not every voter in the district saw it that way. In the 2022 Republican primary, 87 percent of voters in House District 1 backed a nonbinding ballot proposition saying funding “should follow the student” to public or private schools, the Tribune reported.
Abbott endorsed Chris Spencer, chairman of the Sulphur River Basin Authority and a voucher supporter, against VanDeaver in 2024. VanDeaver won their May runoff by about 7 percentage points, while Abbott helped defeat several other anti-voucher Republicans. In April 2025, when the House passed Senate Bill 2, the $1 billion education savings account program that became law, VanDeaver and former Speaker Dade Phelan were the only Republicans to vote against it, the Tribune reported. The Republican Party of Texas censured him that October, one of five lawmakers it censured.
VanDeaver announced Dec. 1, 2025, that he would not seek a seventh term. He said then he would serve through January 2027, but he resigned effective Sept. 21 by letter to Abbott. In his resignation statement, he said leaving early would help his successor “be better positioned to serve the great people of HD1 in the upcoming 90th legislative session.” Spencer won the open-seat Republican primary in March and is on the November ballot.
At TASB, he succeeds acting executive director Tiffany Dunne-Oldfield, the association’s former deputy executive director. Dan Troxell led TASB through at least late 2024. The association has not said publicly when he left or why. The board hired VanDeaver with help from the search firm Korn Ferry.
Board President Tony Hopkins said VanDeaver’s ability “to relate to elected school board members,” his district experience and his ability “to bring the perspective of the many rural members were key reasons for his selection.”
His first test comes quickly. On Oct. 9, trustees vote at TASB’s Delegate Assembly in Houston on the association’s 2026-28 Advocacy Agenda, its list of priorities for the 2027 session. The trustee council drafting it identified four priorities in April: school safety, special education, streamlining state mandates and rules, and investment in student-facing programs. The agenda TASB adopted for the 2025 session centered on “fully funding” students and on decisions made by locally elected boards. Its grassroots topics included teacher pay, a higher basic allotment and opposition to vouchers.
He takes the job Oct. 1, eight days before the delegates vote.