With the help of a few special teachers, he worked his way out of hard circumstances to a career as an educator. And giving back for all he was given is what motivates Randy Moczygemba, 48, the lone finalist for superintendent of the New Braunfels Independent School District.
“I’ve done a little bit of everything in my life,” he said.
An imposing man at 6 feet 4 inches, Moczygemba is warm, friendly and engaging.
His ancestors were among the many Polish settlers who came to Texas in the 1800s.
The youngest of five, from an early age Moczygemba worked in the fields and helped out on the family farm in Wilson — just south of Lubbock. He probably would have stayed on the farm, he said, but a series of tragedies changed his course.
Moczygemba’s mother died of cancer when he was in the fifth grade. A brother was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident not long after, and when Moczygemba was in eighth grade, his father was in an auto accident that left him disabled.
The family sold off farm equipment and gave up the land they leased. So a young Moczygemba worked.
Summers and evenings after school saw him on a concrete crew and in construction, supervising a grain elevator, flipping burgers, running a carhop and doing just about any job he could find on neighboring farms.
During high school, Moczygemba worked around the clock, driving tractors after school and running the graveyard shift at a cotton gin each night, often single-handedly unloading, baling and weighing cotton until dawn before heading off to school.
“You can sleep between cotton trailers,” Moczygemba said. “But I didn’t get much sleep those nights.”
Thanks to the encouragement of two influential teachers who saw his potential and challenged him, Moczygemba threw himself just as hard at his schoolwork as he did in his many jobs.
Judy Womack, a theater and language arts teacher, got him involved in public speaking and one-act plays. And Bobby Lee, who taught agriculture, encouraged Moczygemba in his studies, his work with Future Farmers of America and in leadership competitions.
“I’d never dreamed of going to college,” Moczygemba said.
But he earned a scholarship to West Texas State University in Canyon and later to Texas Tech University in Lubbock, all the while working nights and weekends driving heavy equipment for construction sites.
As a college sophomore, he married his high school sweetheart, Stephanie. And while he had high-paying offers in other fields, after graduation he took a teaching job in the Post ISD.
“I thought I would teach agricultural science for the rest of my life because I loved it and I felt like I was making a difference in the kids’ lives,” Moczygemba said.
But fate had other plans, and at the age of 25 Moczygemba was offered a principal job in Wilson, the rural district where he was raised.
He balked at first, unsure if he was up to the job or if he wanted to leave the classroom. But Moczygemba stepped up and in those early years helped a dying band program grow to be a state competitor, proving to him that working in the head office made a difference.
“I still missed the classroom,” Moczygemba said, but he would spend the rest of his career as an administrator.
From Wilson, he went to Lamesa, where from 1990 to 1999 he was assistant principal, then high school principal and later assistant superintendent.
He was heavily involved in a gifted and talented program, and banked on early experience with computers to help the school system adopt digital records and Internet technology — often hard-wiring buildings himself.
He left education for one year, using his IT skills as vice president of Lamesa National Bank during the run up to Y2K. The bank opportunity popped up at a time when the right position wasn’t open for him in the schools, Moczygemba said, and he had been reluctant to move his two school-aged daughters to a new area.
But at the urging of his family, Moczygemba got back into education, this time as a superintendent in Medina from 2000 to 2007.
He loved the hands-on job of running a small, rural district, he said. Some days, Moczygemba did pest control or drove a bus. Other days, he helped the theatre department, taking a one-act play to a state competition.
“I was directly involved with the kids,” Moczygemba said.
And it was partly that kind of direct involvement that inspired both daughters to go into education, he said.
At 24, Moczygemba’s eldest daughter, Candice, is the principal of the same school in Wilson where he started out (and one year younger than he was when he did it). His younger daughter, Charlcy, teaches theatre arts in Keller ISD near Fort Worth.
“The impact continues,” Moczygemba said.
He has been assistant superintendent in Comal ISD for the past three years, and his wife, Stephanie, is the receptionist at OakRun Middle School.
“I’m here to stay,” Moczygemba said.
He is lone finalist for the superintendent job being vacated by Superintendent Mike Smith, but the final decision is up to the school board on Dec. 14.
Moczygemba is excited about the opportunity to work with the same teachers and administrators who’ve helped make student achievement go “through the roof” in Comal ISD in recent years.
“Now I can have an impact on a large population of students,” Moczygemba said.
