Hoover school board hires new chief administrative officer, Deer Valley principal

The Hoover school board on Tuesday night approved two key promotions, including a new chief administrative officer and new principal for Deer Valley Elementary School.

Terry Lamar, who has been serving as the district’s director of equity and educational initiatives since the fall of 2018, is being promoted to chief administrative officer.

Lamar essentially will fill the shoes of former Assistant Superintendent Tera Simmons, who resigned in July of last year to work with former Hoover Superintendent Kathy Murphy at Gadsden State Community College. He should begin his new role April 1, he said.

Lamar’s job will include overseeing human resources, student services, transportation, operations, and equity and educational initiatives. He said he’s looking forward to it and that it will give him an opportunity to continue developing relationships with other administrators.

Before moving to the central office in 2018, Lamar served for three years as principal at Bluff Park Elementary School.

Lamar originally is from Mobile and got his start in education as a physical education teacher at Tuscaloosa Middle School in 2003.

In 2006, he was hired as the eighth-grade counselor at Bumpus Middle school, where he served for four years. He then spent three years as an assistant principal at South Shades Crest Elementary School and two years as the seventh-grade principal at Berry Middle School before being appointed principal at Bluff Park in 2015.

Meanwhile, Deer Valley Elementary is gaining a new principal with the upcoming April 1 retirement of longtime Principal Wayne Richardson.

The school board on Tuesday agreed to promote Richardson’s assistant principal, Nicole Stokes, to the top job at the school.

Stokes has been in education 21 years, including 16 years at Deer Valley. She was born in Mobile and spent the first 17 years of her life in New Orleans, but her family relocated to Mobile in 1994.

She spent her first five years as a teacher working with first graders at Kate Shepherd Elementary in Mobile but moved to the Birmingham area in 2006. She taught second and third grade classes at Deer Valley for eight years, then spent five years as the math coach at Deer Valley before being made an assistant principal three years ago.

She was a Teacher of the Year at both Kate Shepherd Elementary and Deer Valley Elementary. Stokes has a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Alabama A&M University and a master’s degree in education leadership from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Editor's note: This article was updated at 3:48 p.m. to correct the number of years that Terry Lamar served as a counselor at Bumpus Middle School.