Gooss Wants to See Students Excel

By John Earp

This week, we continue in our endeavor to share with the readers of The Jal Record our interviews with the current candidates for office in Jal. This week, we feature Jal School Board President Jim Gooss, who is running for reelection.

When asked, “What made you want to run for re-election?” Gooss replied, “I’ve been a part of the Jal School Board now for 14 years, and for 13 of those years, I’ve been the board president. It’s been incredibly fulfilling. The teamwork that takes place within our school district, I think, is fantastic. We always have areas to improve. But during this time that I’ve taken part in it, because it’s been so fulfilling, and it’s been a pleasure to watch the district grow, not only in student population, but staff population. And, of course, the district updates at the campus updates that we’ve been doing now for a very long time. I just feel that I still have something to give. I feel like I still have something to provide as far as ideas. And because I still enjoy it, I’m just, I feel that I’m ready to be around for another four years.”

When asked, “In your view, what do you think should be the top three priorities for the district in your next term, if you get reelected?” Gooss replied, “I think one of our big points, we’re currently involved in a six-year study. We’re about two years into that study, and in that study, we’ve noted some core areas that I would call deficiencies. Some people would say, well, they’re just areas for improvement, but I would suggest they’re deficiencies. And the biggest thing that one of my biggest goals is to see our core competencies in between early childhood development all the way through 12th grade in improving our Math and our Reading. I think those are areas that historically, our entire state, and I would venture to say the entire country struggles with. I know our state is lacking significantly nationally in education, but I don’t believe that that means that as a school district that we have to accept that and not succeed and not work for alternatives to improve our students’ outcomes. So the first thing is the core competencies of Math, Reading/English, because we know that if a child is a strong reader, generally by third grade, that they have a higher, much higher likelihood of being successful as they continue through their primary education and then maybe even into college and the workforce. And of course, we know English and reading are linked also very, very closely to math. So that’s the first thing. The second thing is to ensure staff support and retention. We’ve done a pretty good job over the last several years. When I first became a board member in 2011, we had hemorrhaged about 60% of our staff at that time. And subsequently, of course, it has taken a long time to recover from that. And, you know, generally speaking, any type of changes that are implemented, you think you’re going to see about a three-year cycle before you’re really going to start to see improvement. And that was true in three to four years, usually. By about 2015 or so, we started to see some improvements. And I’m very hopeful to suggest that right now, we are recovered. And what I mean by that is we have certified licensed teachers in all the classrooms, which is very unusual. I don’t know of any other districts in the state of the 89 districts in the state that can say that. And I think that comes from all of the changes, not only in our school schedule, but our salary and benefit packages, and then teacherages that are offered to house staff members that we’ve brought into the district. So subsequently, our current position in staffing is very good. However, I believe we need to work and ensure that we have the ability to maintain and retain those staff that we have.”

Gooss continued, “We need to find opportunities to identify current staff members that we can cultivate and grow, because inevitably, we will have people retiring or our staff members retiring. And that’s our seasoned group. And we need to have people already identified if we have that opportunity within our district to help them grow and develop so they can easily fall into those positions. Now, of course, we also want to be able to draw talent from the surrounding districts surrounding states. So that’s another area of importance for me, is staff support and retention. We have the caliber here now, and it’s taken a long time to recover from where we were in 2011. But I think we’ve recovered, and I think we’ve done it relatively well, but we have to make sure we have a plan to engage future vacancies, whether that is identifying, cultivating and developing our own or having a strong district with strong support, benefit packages, things of that nature, to be able to draw in seasoned experienced educators from other surrounding districts or states. Those are the two things that I find that are most important right now.

When asked about the district’s overall grade given by the New Mexico Public Education Department based on statewide standardized testing, Gooss noted the district has improved, saying, “We actually had a D and even an F campus at the time. Now, I will defend us just a little bit because the criteria that the public education Department had put in place at the time, which now is obviously not in place because it was in effective. It was just ineffective. It wasn’t a true representation of many things. It was a faulty grading system. And that’s why. Very quickly, it was dissolved. And they’re still trying to come up with what they feel is a more accurate grading process. But even without that, even, you know, without making any excuse in saying, no, it was a faulty grade or whatever, it doesn’t take a lot of investigation to know that we are not at standard. And I say that freely. We all know it. But that being said, because I can say that freely and our administration and our teachers and the teams that we have in place, they all speak it freely as well. So it is acknowledged, and it is publicly acknowledged in our open board meetings. And we discuss areas of deficiency and proficiency and where we have improved.”

Gooss continued, “The things that we are doing right now is, again, we are part of a six-year study. There’s only, I believe, 12 districts out of 89 that are taking part in this six-year study. And this study is provided by subject-matter experts from around the country and around the state. And it’s very comprehensive. In other words, they came in. They discuss with the staff, with the leadership. They take data. They speak with other focus groups outside of the district. And then they compile data. And then the data, obviously, is rather objective, and it tells you, okay, you are not doing well here and here, and here, and here. And then immediately the team has begun putting in place areas to improve those areas of deficiency. And I will tell you this, just in the last one year, of course, the first eight months or so is just data collection, eight to 12 months, of course, a lot of meetings, but a lot of data collection. But in the second year, which we’re currently in right now, we have seen significant improvements in those two focused core areas, Mathematics, and English/ELA (English language arts). Significant improvement. And when I say that, I mean, by grade level, and it is our improvements are literally doubling. Literally doubling. So if we had, and I don’t have the specific numbers in front of me, but I’ll just use an example and say, if we had eight students in the fifth grade last year that were efficient or proficient in math studies, this year, we had 15, 14, or 16, right? So almost a doubling of every area. And if we had students, if we had five students, let’s say, in the same grade that were near proficiency, well, now we have, 10 students are now proficient, how they moved up, right? We might only have one that’s near proficient, and all of the rest have become proficient. And that goes all the way up through high school. Every grade level is the data has been collected. And what we’re doing is what we decided to use to address those deficiencies is two core programs, one called Math 180 and one called Read 180. Both of those are separate curriculums that focus on areas of development outside of the state requirements. These are not required by the state. Our team came together, reviewed, and interviewed all kinds of curriculum, and they came and said, this is what we need. And of course, we moved forward with that. And just in one year, we are seeing significant increases. So, and let’s just use that number that you suggested around 40%. My belief is within a few, two years to three years, I hope that we’re more like at 70%, right? We are right now already outperforming the state when it comes to improvements. We had some data presented to us last meeting and it was very impressive. Very impressive. As I recall it, what I was looking at first was it was eighth grade standardized testing for Math and Reading in those particular areas.”

One issue Gooss brought up was how slow the NMPED is to return standardized testing results to the school districts. He said, “There’s a significant delay in getting those results back to our staff and our administration. In order to develop a plan to address the deficiencies. It comes in often in the middle of the next year. And therefore, we don’t have the data. So instead of doing that, when we became part of this study, this six-year study, we went out and investigated and became part of other curriculum that is not required by the state that we decided to do as a district and we funded it as a district. And that is just there to develop our students, and we can we can test them specifically to the core concepts and see how they’re performing. And we see that when they’re performing well there, when it comes to the state standardized test, which is obviously what everybody’s graded on, we’re seeing improvement with those as well, because we can see it. We can see where it’s trending within our own data, because of the curriculums, the additional curriculums that we have injected into the schools.” Commenting about the delay in getting results on standardized testing back to the districts, Gooss said, “This has been a voice of frustration throughout the state, throughout the New Mexico School Board Association to hold PED more accountable. And of course, there is some discussion right now that we are really supporting, which is to create instead of a Secretary of Education as governor-appointed, to go back to the state school board that is voted on by school districts, school boards, and, you know, district staff, educational staff, to have them oversee instead of a Secretary of Education that unfortunately is appointed by the governor and very partisan. We’ve been talking about it for a couple of years statewide. At the regional meeting that I attended a couple of weeks ago, we revisited it, and it’s still on the table and it’s still being lobbied and is still trying to be pressed. So hopefully we can make some more ground in February in the legislative session. Yes, so that’s something that has to come through from the legislature. New Mexico used to have a state school board, and of course, again, partisanly, that was removed, and Secretary of Education was put in place. And ever since that has taken place, we’ve always struggled, but now the system is just broken. The communication chain is completely ineffective. It’s very siloed and it’s not supportive of strong education at all. But hopefully we can continue to push forth and work against that. And, you know, the districts that are really putting their work and where their mouth is and trying to get it done. I think we’re making headway.

When asked what he has been proud of since being on the school board, Gooss said, “I think the first thing is, is that, of course, the district expansion that we started years and years ago, you know, we’re approximately, and I’ll be honest, I don’t know the exact number, but it’s around $140 million thus far that we’ve injected into our district in development just to overhaul the entire district. And we were able to do that with our initial bond at $52 million, as a 30-year bond, and we paid it off in seven years so that the rest of this, $80,000 to $90 to $100 million, and I apologize, I don’t know the exact figures at this point, we’re debt free. We are a debt-free district. And with all of the builds and enhancements that we’ve had, we’ve able been able to be very financially responsible with that. And that’s been a really big personal goal in my last term.”

Gooss continued, “Another thing is our resource officers, our police officers at each of our campuses a couple of years ago during this term, we just said, you know, we need, unfortunately, in today’s environment, we would like to have a resource officer, which immediately the next year expanded to, well, we want one at each campus. It’s proved to be very, very effective, and the community supports it. The students support it. The staff support it. And of course, what the students and staff say is of high importance to us. So, of course, it makes us feel better having those officers there as well. That’s a second thing.”

He continued, “I would say the third thing that I feel pretty proud of is that we’ve been able to, over the last couple of years, really, through financial management, and the correct appropriation of funds, we’ve been able to do things, like give our staff significant pay raises over the last several years. and we’ve been able to pay 100% of their health insurance benefits for the staff. And then, of course, within this last one year, the recruitment of some very talented, seasoned, experienced educators and coaches. I think all of that have taken place in the last four years or so, or it’s really ramped up the last four years. So I think I’m proud to be a part of that. I’m proud that, you know, that happened while I was at least part of a team. It just kind of culminated to today, which obviously leads me to why I would love to have another four years. A

Ab0ut his personal background, Gooss said, “So I was raised in Las Vegas, Nevada. I met my wife, Brandy, in 2000. We met there while she was working in Las Vegas. We met in an emergency room, and subsequently, we got married a couple of years later. Then, at the very beginning of 2004, we moved to Jal, New Mexico, where my wife is from. Her family is here. They’re legacy ranchers. And so we moved here in 2004 and have been here ever since. Excuse me, I want to back up just a little bit. Of course, we have four children who all attended and graduated from the Jal Public School District. Each of them are very, very successful, and the school district did them very well. The community did them very, very well. Just in the last nine years, I transitioned from emergency medicine to family medicine, and I’ve been with the Jal Clinic now for nine years, and working in family medicine, alongside of my wife, who’s also a provider here. And our daughter, our oldest child, is now a provider here as well, just as of the last three or four months. So, it’s come full circle. Jal has definitely become my home. We have two grandchildren that both attend Jal Schools, and we love it.”

Gooss says he started out as “a paramedic firefighter.” I moved to New Mexico, was a firefighter here. I had had some previous injuries of my back during my career. And then I had an injury that made me reevaluate things, how effective I could be for not only myself, but for my team, and decided that I needed to look other directions as far as my physical health and my ability to perform at the highest level, which I’ve always believed you should. So I stepped into flight medicine and I flew on a helicopter, air medical air evac for about eight years or so. During that time, I went back to school, decided to change my career path, because obviously working as a paramedic, paramedic, pre-hospital medicine, very physically tasking, and you can’t really dictate or, you know, where you’re going to be. And, of course, my back health, which is very healthy now. It was just, I wasn’t a 100%, and I didn’t feel it was the right thing to put other people in jeopardy. So even flying, I decided, well, I’m going to go back, change my career path a little bit and go through nursing school, become a nurse, which I did, and I did it with the whole intention of going through advanced practice and becoming a nurse practitioner. So when I started off, I always knew where I was going to end up. And so over a period of several years, I went through and completed my undergrad subsequently graduated school and became a nurse practitioner. And that’s what I’ve been doing now for the last 10 years, 11 years or so. When you do things out of order and, of course, you know, I had a wife and four children at the time. So, you know, so not working wasn’t really a good option.

When asked, “If someone that you didn’t know were to ask you, ‘Why should I vote for you?’ What would you tell them?” Gooss replied, “Well, I think, in this case, my experience really matters. I’m really proud that I have a proven track record of progress that I did not achieve by myself, obviously, but as a member of a team, and for many years as the president of that team or an officer of that team. I have a proven track record. I want to continue to build on the foundation that we’ve already created. You know, we’ve maintained fiscal responsibility, always putting student achievements and staff support at the top of that priority. And lastly, I’ve always focused on providing a safe and very modern and supportive learning environment for our staff and specifically our students. I’m an advocate for public schools, and I have some sweat equity in this. I own it. I believe it. I’m a part of it. I’m responsible to it. I’m responsible for it. And of course, I want to see not only my grandchildren who are here now, but every student achieve and be safe and happy and be greeted and known as an individual. And that’s why I would ask that they vote for me.”