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BELOIT -- The West Branch Board of Education approved a new memorandum of understanding with the West Branch Education Association during its October meeting.
The board voted unanimously to authorize an MOU concerning Written Education Plans (WEP) for Gifted Students. Superintendent Matt Manley said that WEPs are written plans outlining how the district will implement gifted services to enrich the student's education, and that the MOU will provide union members with a new option for completing WEPs.
Manley said that currently teachers must complete WEPs after school and are paid an hourly rate for the time they spend doing so. The MOU will give union members the option to instead have a half-day sub and write them during the school day instead. He estimated that each WEP takes anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour to complete, and that teachers typically must write them for several students, noting that one of the district's teachers had 38 students requiring WEPs.
The board also voted unanimously to join the Eastern Buckeye Conference (EBC) for football in the 2028-2029 school year. Manley said that currently the district is only joining the conference for football. With West Branch and the Alliance City School District as the conference's only current full-time members, Manley said that either the conference would need to be rebuilt, or the district would need to find a new conference for its other athletic programs.
"Football is now taken care of. The thing we're looking at now, us and Alliance, is that we don't have a conference for all our other sports," Manley said.
Manley noted that the Crestview, Howland, and Catholic Central School Districts were also without a conference and could join West Branch and Alliance in reconstituting the conference if two more full-time members were identified and joined. He said that continuing the district's membership in the EBC for the time being would help the district's athletic director with scheduling games for sports other than football as West Branch will continue to play games against other districts which have partially or wholly withdrawn from the EBC and that it was "just a question of the number of games."
Other matters approved included: in lieu of transportation payments; permission for the West Branch Little Warrior youth wrestling program to utilize district facilities for the 2026-2027 school year in coordination with athletic director and/or building principal; an athletic supplemental for Mike Butcher as girls basketball assistant coach; and approval for Coach Cederbloom and the cross country team to travel to Terre Haute, Indiana to compete in the Nike Cross Regional meet on Nov. 14-15.
The meeting concluded with an executive session to discuss the employment of a public official and to consider legal matters required to be kept confidential by federal law or regulations or state statutes which was followed by no action.