BELOIT — West Branch Superintendent Micki Egli provided an update on the district’s potential financial future in the board of education’s meeting Monday.

Egli said that “a little more information” had been obtained on how Gov. Mike DeWine’s biennial budget proposal would affect the district. While she stressed that nothing was set in stone, she said that if DeWine’s proposal was approved in its current form that the district’s funding would be cut by $1.6 million over the next two years.

Egli also said that she and Treasurer Adam Fisher had spoken with state Sen. Al Cutrona and state Rep. Lauren McNally who were hopeful that the budget would not be approved in its current form, but that they were only two representatives amongst the entirety of the officials in the state legislature; and the district was working to ensure it was as prepared as possible for budget cuts.

“As you can all imagine it’s going to be very challenging to cut $1.6 million from our expenditures. [Treasurer Adam] Fisher and I have been responsive with individuals who retire over the last several years and whether we need to replace those positions or not, so we will be looking at some retire-rehires and not bringing them back,” said Egli. “I’ve already spoken with the individuals that are affected and we’re just trying to be as prepared as we can that if the budget does go through, we have things in place that will be helping us to move forward.”

Egli said that those potential cuts were one of the reasons that the district would be “moving away” from running its own digital academy services starting with the 2025-2026 school year. Egli explained that the district began its Warrior Academy service prior to the Covid-19 pandemic but it was no longer profitable, and the district would instead purchase those services “at a significant savings” compared to the cost of running its own program.

“It served a great purpose for us, a very valuable purpose, and for many years other school districts purchased the service from us for their students who were at home or had medical conditions and were not able to come into school. However, since Covid has passed the participation from other districts has drastically declined,” said Egli. “At one point we were actually making a little bit of money off that service from other people purchasing it but that is no longer, so we are going to go away from that. We will still have credit recovery services available for high school students who need them, we will still have some summer school offerings, but we will be purchasing that service off the [Mahoning] County educational service center.”

Another potential place where the district may be forced to cut costs is at the Knox Elementary building, which Egli said the board may be forced to consider shuttering in the coming months as the budget proposal moves through the legislature.

“Knox houses our pre-school, it also houses some leased space. We lease five classrooms to a daycare that is drastically needed in our area, we also lease four classrooms to the Columbiana County Educational Service Center for programming for students with special needs,” said Egli. “It might be in the near future that the board decides to close Knox and determine what to do in that capacity. That has not been decided at this point, but it is something that the board is going to be considering over the next couple months in regard to keeping the district solvent with our finances and expenditures.”

Egli concluded her report by stressing again that nothing was currently set in stone, and that while the district did not want to make cuts it had to be prepared.

“Right now, it’s just a waiting game and we’re trying to be as fiscally responsible as possible with the funds. It’s nothing that any of us want to face but we want to remain as West Branch,” said Egli.

The board of education will meet next at 5:30 p.m. April 16.