Following his transfer from East Elementary School, Branch Whitlock has resigned his position as the Cullman City School’s archery coordinator as he awaits the outcome of an Alabama Ethics Commission Investigation.

Whitlock has served as the East Elementary archery coach for more than a decade and has earned the school numerous titles including seven Alabama state championships, two-time national championships and one world championship.

East Elementary was also runner-up for the state championship on two occasions and runner-up for the national championship three times under Whitlock’s leadership.

Whitlock was promoted to coordinating the district’s archery coordinator which included developing a program for West Elementary.

Whitlock offered his resignation to the Cullman City School Board Thursday, June 13, immediately following his involuntary transfer from his position as East Elementary Physical Education teacher to the district’s Turning Point — school based, in school suspension program — teacher.

The week before Whitlock’s resignation the Alabama Ethics Commission unanimously determined Whitlock had committed one minor violation to the state’s ethics laws. The commission moved for an administrative resolution and referred the case to Cullman County District Attorney Champ Crocker for review.

As of press time The Times has not received a response to messages left with the district attorney’s office.

Details for ethics complaints and investigations are protected under Alabama’s Grand Jury Secrecy restrictions however Whitlock said the complaint stemmed from his decision to allow archery teams under his supervision to participate in tournaments hosted by the Cullman Basketball Complex, which he owns.

Whitlock said as the popularity of school archery programs began to increase, he began holding tournaments through his business around four years ago and chose to register Cullman City archery teams in those tournaments.

“If they didn’t compete in those tournaments they would have been one of the only teams around who weren’t competing,” Whitlock said.

As an educator, Whitlock said he participated in annual online ethics courses, but did not feel as though his actions would be considered an ethics violation. He said apart from two years, all Cullman City Schools hosted tournaments were held in the Cullman High School gym, once when Covid 19 restrictions prevented the use of the gym and the following year when the gym flooded.

Whitlock also said he turned in expense reports to administrators at the end of every school year which detailed the program’s participation in Cullman Basketball Complex tournaments. He said those reports had not raised any flags until the end of the 2022-2023 school year when the complaint was filed.

Public records requests for those financial statements submitted by The Times are currently pending.

Whitlock said the timing of the ethics hearing was purely coincidental and did not factor into his decision to resign from the archery program and was unaware if the violation factored into his transfer. He said he was given the opportunity to remain as the archery coordinator, but felt as though his new position wouldn’t allow him to be as involved in the program as he needed to be.

“My thinking is that a coach needs to be someone who is there at the school with those kids and can be available. I don’t want to hold those kids back,” Whitlock said.

Superintendent Kyle Kallhoff said that he was aware a complaint had been filed against Whitlock, but had not been made aware of the precise nature of the complaint. He added that he was “as surprised as anyone” when Whitlock announced his resignation and spoke highly of him in a statement released Thursday, June 27.

“We appreciate Branch Whitlock and what he has done for archers at East Elementary and our school system, and respect his decision to step down from his archery commitments,” Kallhoff said in the statement. “We are committed to archery and fully intend to keep our program thriving and competitive at the county, state and national level.”

Whitlock said he realized his actions should have been handled differently, but he stood behind his intentions.

“I know that I can stand on my character and that this wasn’t anything intentional,” Whitlock said. “This is just something that I was able to learn from and hopefully other teachers and public officials can learn from it as well.”