Terrell Pollard
Elections and appointments
Personal
Contact
Terrell Pollard ran for election to the Henrico County Public Schools to represent Fairfield District in Virginia. He lost in the general election on November 7, 2023.
Pollard completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2023. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
Terrell Pollard was born in Richmond, Virginia. He earned a bachelor's degree from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2006 and a graduate degree from Champlain College in 2018. His career experience includes working as a program manager.[1]
Elections
2023
See also: Henrico County Public Schools, Virginia, elections (2023)
General election
Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
Endorsements
Pollard received the following endorsements. To view a full list of Pollard's endorsements as published by their campaign, click here.
2023
Video for Ballotpedia
Video submitted to Ballotpedia
Released October 22, 2023
|
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Terrell Pollard completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2023. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Pollard's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
Expand all | Collapse all
Terrell Pollard grew up in Coventry Gardens Apartments in Eastern Henrico. Terrell has a long history of advocating for education and healthy youth development. He is often credited with the creation of the Eastern Henrico Recreation Center. Terrell served as one of the youth leaders in a push for the facility in response to lack of resources for youth in Eastern Henrico. The experience set him on a lifelong path for advocacy in the areas of education and youth development. He has a Political Science Degree from VCU and a Master’s in Business Administration with a Concentration in Leadership from Champlain College. While in college, Terrell founded, managed, and taught in an English as a Second Language Program. Terrell is the immediate past president of the Henrico NAACP where he successfully led movements to have equity offices created in Henrico Schools and for the County of Henrico. He is currently the Chair of Henrico Too Smart 2 Start (HTS2S) Coalition. He rallies community stakeholders around the issue of youth substance use prevention. He is also the Vice Chair on Henrico County’s Board of Zoning Appeals. Terrell is running to be elected as the Fairfield District School Board Member. He wants the schools of the Fairfield District to be a beacon for educational excellence. He plans to focus on recruiting and retaining more educators and support staff, working more closely with parents, and empowering youth of every age group to reach new heights.
- I have the proven track record that shows I am best-suited making real progress.
- Students come first. They deserve a physically and emotionally safe environment where they can explore, learn, grow and graduate prepared for the world.
- It takes a village: I will be an intermediary between stakeholders, working to build consensus but also so that students are empowered and parents are included and community resources leveraged.
I am personally passionate about offering preschool to every 4 year old in Henrico County. It will help ensure the youth of Henrico have an equal opportunity to be prepared for Kindergarten by Henrico County Public Schools.
I also aim to expand afterschool and summer offerings at low or no cost to families. I am also passionate about healthy self-advocacy taught. I also want youth to be able to learn emotional intelligence by using technology to make monitoring one's own health and emotions fun and educational.
Henrico County Public Schools has great Career Technical Education programs and I'd like to make sure we have enough seats and offer exposures to enough professions to help our students find their interest, strengths, and be knowledgeable about which industries are growing.
I will aggressively support the growth and enhancement of program for gifted students.
I will continue to make sure the schools are adhering to Exceptional Education standards that have been a concern in recent years and to have award winning Exceptional Education programs.
I'd like to expand and enhance the services schools offer multilingual families.
I will continue to support the use of weapons detectors, making the use of restorative circles part of the code of conduct, make conflict resolution lessons a part of teaching at every level, and support policies that promote inclusivity in order to help ensure our schools are emotionally and physically safe for everyone. I look up Frank Thornton, the Fairfield District Supervisor. He is known for being a present and responsive leader. He has a lot of influence, because the people know he cares. He shows it in how he leads. I’d like to follow his example. The purpose of being an elected official is to serve the people, represent the will of the people.
Too many to just name a few
Having a strong work ethic, being empathetic, having a love for accomplishing goals with others, being willing to be held accountable
Unmatched work ethic, a true passion for all youth to excel, empathy, a great ability to fundraise, and great experience in advocacy.
To be a present, responsive, and servant leader. Work hard to execute the goals of the office. Be accountable to the constituents.
Helping to spur a culture of excellence in Fairfield District schools.
I vaguely remember a few, but I vividly remember the September 11th attacks. I was sleeping in my VCU dorm room when the first plane struck. I was awakened by my roommate as reports of it came in. We watch the second plane strike. I was 18. It was my freshman year. A few years later, I would work for the Department of Homeland Security.
My first job was working for Henrico Recreation and Parks’ Kiddie Kollege for preschool students. I worked in that area for 2 years, and then for the next 5 years I worked for Henrico Recreation and Parks’ Therapeutic Recreation serving students with emotional disabilities for one session as well as students with developmental disabilities for another session.
The primary and official job of the School Board member is to manage the budget; review, interpret and write school policy; and oversee the performance of school division's superintendent.
I see the unofficial role as being accountable to residents of the district; advocating on behalf of the district to the Board of Supervisors and state legislators; and helping to secure resources for schools and PTAs by having working relationships with faith-based organizations, nonprofit, and businesses.
The residents of the Fairfield District
I want to reinvigorate the "It Takes a Village" approach to students learning and development. I will work tirelessly to ensure all students are exposed to their interests, have their strengths challenged in healthy ways, are held accountable in healthy ways, have their personal goals supported, and are provided tools to mitigate challenges, e.g. mental health coping skill, conflict resolution, etc. I will ensure the schools' police celebrate diversity and promote inclusivity. I will continue to support the schools efforts of address the needs of students that are faced with food and housing insecurity. I will aggressively, but restoratively reduce bullying. I will ensure multilingual families feel welcome and continue to enhance the services offered those families. Overall, I want to make sure that all students are appropriately prepared for college and/or careers as soon as they graduate.
I will collaborate with the school division's office of Family and Community Engagement, the Henrico Education Association, as well as the Henrico Education Foundation to help me identify organizations that will help enhance and further the performances of our schools and students. I am currently very active in the schools and serve on multiple advisory boards, so I have garnered great working relationships with school based and community stakeholders.
Good teaching is seeing each of your students, helping students discover their interests and strengths, caring for the students social emotional development, and encouraging the students to persevere and excel. To support advanced teaching approaches, I will support the guidance and efforts of subject matter experts within the school division. To measure this, I will collaborate with fellow board members, collaborate with senior leadership, review the attendance of schools, the percentage of students reading on grade level, the percentage of students graduating, the percentage of students pursuing a career or higher education within six months to a year of graduating high school.
I do see a need for advanced technical training and apprenticeships. I'd like to be creative and offer students paid apprenticeships and have universities and companies pay students to learn, develop, and explore a wide variety of professions. I love what Henrico County Public Schools is doing with Career Technical Education, and I'd like to support its growth and enhancement in the division.
I am in favor of the Commonwealth of Virginia updating the formula with which they fund schools. I see the role as School Board member to advocate to the Board of Supervisors and to advocate to state legislators in order to increase funding. Within the first 100 days of becoming a school board member, I will review the budget with a fine tooth come to make sure we are not wasting funds and reallocate funds where necessary.
Emotional and physical safety is a mandatory foundation to have a thriving school division. Without safety, the schools cannot excel.
Increase the number of mental health professionals in schools, increase the number of guidance counselors, promote the use of restorative circles, have monthly meetings, continue to teach and use mindfulness, and enhance the school division's ability to respond to the discovery of substance misuse.
I'd like to increase the pay of teachers and staff. I'd like to have the schools agree to a collective bargaining agreement with the Henrico Education Association.
Frank Thornton, Fairfield District, Board of Supervisors
Shannon Taylor, Henrico Commonwealth’s Attorney
Alisa Gregory, Henrico Sheriff
Alicia Atkins, Varina District, School Board
Lashrecse Aird, 13th District, VA Senate (Candidate)
Safe, fun, interactive, with multiple faculty members in the environment.
I feel like the school district handled the coronavirus pandemic very well. The district was extremely responsive the social emotional needs of students, the addressed food insecurity, mental health challenges, delivered resources to home, held community events to help keep students active, and taught in person as the virus waned. Hind sight is 20/20. I would have students return to in-person teaching sooner with better health safe guard, have more outdoor or social distanced events for students that remain virtual, and offer intensive, one-on-one tutoring.
I will have month meetings, join PTAs, help reignite inactive PTAs, work hard to promote parental involvement, work hard to make being involved more inclusive, and work hard to increase participation in school board meetings.
I prefer strategies of significantly increasing the salary, offering signing bonuses for key groups, (e.g. graduates of Henrico schools returning to teach), offering housing incentives, offering paying for tuition, offering internships, partnering with local colleges and universities, and participating in national, grant-funded opportunities that help staff schools.
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
Other survey responses
Ballotpedia identified the following surveys, interviews, and questionnaires Pollard completed for other organizations. If you are aware of a link that should be added, email us.
See also
External links
- ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on October 24, 2023
