Candice Moore Devoted 34 of Her 50 Years in Education to Aldine

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(Editor’s Note: Due to the cancellation of the Employee Awards Banquet, Aldine’s Communications Department will feature employees who have announced they will retire at the conclusion of the 2019-2020 school year).

After 50 years in education, 34 with Aldine ISD, Candice Moore is retiring.

Candace Moore poses with her good friend and mentor, Ken Knippel, at Mr. Knippel’s retirement ceremony in May of 2019.

The likable Moore, who has served as executive director of Student Services for the last 19 years, said after stops in Iowa, Chicago, Buffalo, N.Y.  and Houston, it is time to step away from the profession she loves.

“After 50 years, this seems like a nice round stopping point,” said the Illinois native.

Moore received her bachelor’s degree in math and her master’s degree in special education from Drake University.

She began her career in education as a junior high math teacher in Des Moines, IA, where she started the first special education LD/ED Resource Room in the history of that district.

She then moved to Chicago, where she taught for two years before moving to Buffalo, NY, where Moore spent seven years in a Buffalo suburb serving as a special education teacher. That is where she met a woman in the district’s central administration office who held a similar job that Moore would hold when she joined Aldine’s Student Services Department.

After a year in El Paso, she moved to Houston and served as a special education teacher at MacArthur High School and opened the district’s first content mastery classroom.

After 5.5 years at MacArthur, Moore moved to the Student Services Department, where she started as an administrative assistant, was promoted to director, and then to the executive director of Student Services, a position she has held since 2001.

Ironically, Moore, a native of Illinois,  did not give education much of a thought as a profession. She aspired to be a mathematician or statistician, but it was something her mother told her that made her change her mind.

“My mother said every woman should have a teaching certificate,” Moore remembered. “So, while planning to be a mathematician or statistician, I dipped into courses in the college of education at Drake. I started student teaching at a Des Moines high school, where the director of math education also taught one period a day.

“Without forewarning, he presented me with a contract. I really was enjoying my student teaching and hated the idea of job hunting and leaving Des Moines, which I had come to love, so I signed it (the contract). Fifty years later, I’m still in education,” she said.

Aldine and other schools where Moore taught can thank that director for noticing Moore had a gift.

Moore said she has thoroughly enjoyed her career, especially the 34 years she has spent in Aldine, which has become a second family to her.

She believes she has been able to make a difference in thousands to students’ and parent’s lives over the last 34 years.

“Having parents tell me their special needs children would not have graduated from high school without me means so much to me,” she said. “Being a member of the Student Services team, which has always put serving the needs of the schools above all else, has also been a highlight of my career.”

And working with one very special friend, she added.

“Learning from and working with Ken Knippel (who served as her supervisor as Assistant Superintendent of Administration before passing away in January 2020) was so special to me. It’s been a pleasure to work with others to fund Ken’s AEF (Aldine Education Foundation) scholarship fund.”

During her 34 years in Aldine, Moore has made many life-long friends, and she will miss seeing them daily.

“I will miss the people I work most closely with,” she said. “I will also miss the opportunity to problem-solve every day, and hopefully, I’ll find new problems to solve. I’ll also miss the PEIMS process. I’m probably one of the few people who love the orderliness of proofing and organizing data.”

Moore said she and her husband would be spending time with their granddaughter, who lives in Florida. She’s an avid knitter and will spend time doing that and yoga. Moore has joined the Board of the Apollo Chamber Players, a string quartet in Houston, and will devote more time to supporting it and other small arts groups in the city.

And while she is retiring, she won’t be going away forever.

“Hopefully, I can contract back in the district for a while,” Moore said.

A lot of Moore’s life-long friends would be very, very happy if she did come back!