Kenneth Simington has a gift for working with people, says Don Martin, the superintendent of Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools.
"He's soft-spoken," Martin said. "He asks the right questions."
And he listens to the answers, Martin said.
As the assistant superintendent for student services, Simington is called upon to do a lot of listening.
His responsibilities include guidance counselors, social workers, psychologists, home-school coordinators, alternative education, dropout-prevention programs, drug-free-school programs, education for homeless students, student assignment and student records.
On Tuesday night, Simington will receive a Movers & Shakers Award from Business Leader Media. In conjunction with that, he is featured in the September issue of Business Leader magazine. Members of the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County school board moved the board's regular meeting from Tuesday to Sept. 29 so that Martin and others could attend the awards dinner.
Paul Puryear, the assistant superintendent for high schools, also highlighted Simington's people skills.
"He is probably one of the most thoughtful and insightful people I have worked with," Puryear said. "I think the world of him."
Simington, 48, grew up here. His father, Leon, worked for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., and his mother, Ernestine, worked for Western Electric. His father died when Simington was 11, leaving his mother with six children. It was important to his parents that all six go to college -- and they did.
After Simington graduated from East Forsyth High School, where he was a point guard on the basketball team, he attended UNC Chapel Hill. Interested in people and their behavior, Simington decided to focus on psychology and counseling. At Carolina, he earned bachelor and master's degrees, and met his wife, Velvet. They now have three children -- two adult sons and a daughter at Mount Tabor High School.
Velvet Simington is the school system's program manager for math in the middle and high schools. She is from Pamlico County, and one of his early jobs was as a guidance counselor at Pamlico Junior High School.
"Initially, I thought being in schools was going to be a short stint," he said.
But he soon found that he liked talking with young people about their dreams and aspirations, and doing what he could to help them achieve their goals. Simington joined the local system in 1989 as a guidance counselor at Hanes-Lowrance Middle School. After earning his doctorate at UNC Greensboro in 1996, he became an assistant professor at the University of Virginia. He returned to the school system in 1999 as the director of student services. In 2006, he became the assistant superintendent for student services.
"I have the opportunity to be involved in a range of projects," he said. "Those projects cut across just about every aspect of the school system. That is rewarding."
Simington also enjoys teaching and is an adjunct professor at Wake Forest University, where he has a course in multicultural counseling. Simington works a lot of hours -- some of them because he likes to say "yes" when churches and organizations ask him to participate in one of their programs, many of which take place nights and weekends.
Buddy Collins, a member of the school board, said that such people as Simington are the heart and soul of the school system.
"He is passionate about students and about students doing well in our school system," Collins said. "Ken Simington is one of the behind-the-scenes people in our schools that make things work well."
kunderwood@wsjournal.com
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