This bio is part of Tiger Times Online’s coverage of the 2025 school board election. The election will take place on April 1. For more information, click here.

For a full Q&A with Jacob Goebel, click here.

Jacob Goebel is one of two candidates running for a seat on District 7’s School Board from outside the largest Edwardsville Township in the 2025 Consolidated Madison County elections, with the other being Mathew Breihan.

Goebel is running for the school board because he’s been trying to get shop and vocational programs back to District 7 after they were cut during a financial crisis in 2008.

“Ever since then, I’ve been trying to get those programs back,” he said. “We are back in CAVC, but now I’m trying to get the one-hour shop classes back at the high school and at the middle school.”

Alongside bringing back shop and vocational programs, Goebel would like to review the board’s current policies and look at disciplinary actions.

“I know there’s committees set up for protecting students and making a free place of learning,” he said. “I know zero tolerance is not allowed but there are levels we can look at.”

Goebel’s view on changing the school start times and class schedules — which was the most prevalent issue among polled EHS students — is that it’s necessary because of Illinois’s climbing graduation requirements and even suggests a potential eight-hour day.

I’ve actually, in the past, have floated an idea of, let’s go to the eight-block system, four classes, one day for the next, because it would give you a total of 32 credits graduating over four years, as opposed to 24,” he said. “It just opens that window of opportunity for learning a whole lot more.”

Overall, Goebel says if elected to the board, he would like to keep an open mind instead of going in with the mindset that he has all the right answers.

“As President John Kennedy said, you don’t look for the Republican answer or the Democratic answer. You look for the right answer. Same thing with the school board,” he said. “I have ideas, they may not be the right ideas. And someone else may have a better idea, but you got to listen to it and actually see what would be the best for our students.”