About Cyndy Simms
An academic administrator with more than two decades of experience
as a school superintendent, Cyndy Simms has dedicated her professional
life to improving K-12 educational systems. In 1988, she was hired by
the Placerville Union School District. The success of her
strategic-incentive program to raise reading scores for the district’s
eighth-graders led the district’s Board of Trustees to nominate her for
California Superintendent of the Year.
Cyndy Simms went on to
serve as a lead administrator for the Steamboat Springs School District
in Colorado for nine years, during which she helped secure an education
sales tax that brought the district more than $2 million per year, as
well as a $700,000 expansion bond to double the size of the high school.
After four years with the Mercer Island School District in
Washington State, during which a long-range plan for instructional
improvement was implemented, Dr. Simms brought her high-performance
attitude to the Walnut Valley Unified School District in Southern
California, where she was instrumental in securing an $80 million bond
to renovate classrooms, athletic fields, and facilities. She retired in
2010, but only briefly, accepting a contract for the superintendency in
the San Mateo-Foster City elementary district in the San Francisco Bay
Area, where she will serve into 2015.
A graduate of Bethany
College in West Virginia, Cyndy Simms earned her Bachelor’s degree in
Elementary Education, going on to get a Master’s degree in Special
Education from the University of Virginia. Later, at the University of
Denver, she would acquire both a Master's degree in Public
Administration and a doctorate in School Administration. Cyndy Simms has
spoken publicly about performance pay models at symposia organized by
the Consortium for Policy Research in Education and the National
Commission on Teaching and America’s Future.
Cyndy Simms has
been an active Rotarian for much of her professional life, currently
serving as a member of the Foster City Rotary Club. She was President of
the Walnut Valley club in her former community.
Cyndy Simms' Links
