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01-30-2010, 06:56 PM
UIL realignment: How does it work? Breaking down the process
03:07 PM CST on Saturday, January 30, 2010
By BRANDON GEORGE / The Dallas Morning News
In an age of computers and electronic gadgets, the University Interscholastic League prefers an old-school approach for its biennial realignment.
UIL athletic director Cliff Odenwald said the UIL uses an “old system but a true system” when placing teams in districts. A computer plays little part in the UIL’s realignment process. Instead, maps, pushpins and rubber bands take on a more prominent role.
Area high school coaches and athletic directors will be on the edge of their seats at 9 a.m. Monday, when the UIL announces the reclassification and realignment for the 2010-11 and 2011-12 school years.
The announcement will end almost four months of speculation about what district a team might land in and with what other schools.
“Everybody gets pretty excited about realignment this time of year,” Northwest ISD athletic director Gary Prescott said. “But it is pretty much a guessing game.”
The first step for schools in the realignment process is submitting their enrollment figures. That took place Oct. 15, when each school took the number of students enrolled at their campus in grades nine through 12 and submitted that figure to the UIL.
That’s when Odenwald and UIL director of policy Mark Cousins get started with the process. Their first step is to verify the enrollment numbers are correct. The enrollment numbers are then placed in numerical order from largest to smallest.
The UIL then starts to decide what the cutoff number will be for each class (1A through 5A). No more than 245 schools are placed in 5A and from that point on, the UIL uses a 2.0 ratio in an effort to try to ensure that one school in a given classification isn’t twice as large as the school with the smallest enrollment in that class.
During this process, UIL officials are only looking at numbers. Unlike popular belief, there is no bias shown to one school over another because no school names are attached to their enrollment numbers. For the larger classifications, the UIL places schools in four regions of eight districts each.
Once the cutoff numbers for each classification are decided, each school is represented on Texas maps by a pushpin. Odenwald said the goal is to limit schools’ travel as much as possible. The UIL also strives to make the districts have an even-numbered amount of schools.
The UIL uses rubber bands to place around the pushpins of one district to get an idea of how close each school is to the next.
Sometimes those rubber bands stretch wide for Class 5A schools in West Texas and East Texas because there aren’t many large schools outside of Texas’ metropolitan areas such as Dallas and Fort Worth. During the last realignment in 2008, DeSoto, Mesquite, Mesquite Horn and North Mesquite were placed in District 11-5A with Tyler Lee and Tyler John Tyler.
“When you look at East Texas and West Texas, their population is generally shrinking, so schools are dropping classifications and as schools drop classifications, you have fewer options to align districts,” Odenwald said. “You have to align some schools to those outlying areas and you have to find the schools that are closer.”
DeSoto football coach Claude Mathis and Mesquite ISD athletic director Steve Bragg said they hope to not be placed in a district with teams in East Texas this time around but figure it will likely happen again. Mathis and Bragg said their school district’s travel costs have risen significantly over the last two years because of having to travel so far to play the Tyler teams.
“I hope that the UIL would let someone else have the fun and spread the cost a little bit,” Bragg said.
Added Mathis: “It seems like we always get crapped on. It’s killing us. It’s not a good deal.”
Odenwald said it usually takes a few weeks to get all the maps pinned and the room with all the maps is secured.
“We keep the maps under lock and key,” Odenwald said.
Typically all the realignment decisions are finalized by the end of December, Odenwald said.
After Christmas break, UIL officials return and check and recheck their work to make sure no mistakes are made before the early February announcement takes place.
After the announcement, schools can appeal the UIL’s decision until Feb. 11. Some schools will request to move up in classification and others will appeal to change districts because of travel concerns. The appeals hearings are heard Feb. 18.
“Realignment is always challenging because you want to be fair to all schools,” Odenwald said. “It is a lengthy process. It takes time to do it correctly. There is a lot of thought and a little sweat that goes into trying to get the best possible situation for all schools involved in the alignment.”
Print Shar
03:07 PM CST on Saturday, January 30, 2010
By BRANDON GEORGE / The Dallas Morning News
In an age of computers and electronic gadgets, the University Interscholastic League prefers an old-school approach for its biennial realignment.
UIL athletic director Cliff Odenwald said the UIL uses an “old system but a true system” when placing teams in districts. A computer plays little part in the UIL’s realignment process. Instead, maps, pushpins and rubber bands take on a more prominent role.
Area high school coaches and athletic directors will be on the edge of their seats at 9 a.m. Monday, when the UIL announces the reclassification and realignment for the 2010-11 and 2011-12 school years.
The announcement will end almost four months of speculation about what district a team might land in and with what other schools.
“Everybody gets pretty excited about realignment this time of year,” Northwest ISD athletic director Gary Prescott said. “But it is pretty much a guessing game.”
The first step for schools in the realignment process is submitting their enrollment figures. That took place Oct. 15, when each school took the number of students enrolled at their campus in grades nine through 12 and submitted that figure to the UIL.
That’s when Odenwald and UIL director of policy Mark Cousins get started with the process. Their first step is to verify the enrollment numbers are correct. The enrollment numbers are then placed in numerical order from largest to smallest.
The UIL then starts to decide what the cutoff number will be for each class (1A through 5A). No more than 245 schools are placed in 5A and from that point on, the UIL uses a 2.0 ratio in an effort to try to ensure that one school in a given classification isn’t twice as large as the school with the smallest enrollment in that class.
During this process, UIL officials are only looking at numbers. Unlike popular belief, there is no bias shown to one school over another because no school names are attached to their enrollment numbers. For the larger classifications, the UIL places schools in four regions of eight districts each.
Once the cutoff numbers for each classification are decided, each school is represented on Texas maps by a pushpin. Odenwald said the goal is to limit schools’ travel as much as possible. The UIL also strives to make the districts have an even-numbered amount of schools.
The UIL uses rubber bands to place around the pushpins of one district to get an idea of how close each school is to the next.
Sometimes those rubber bands stretch wide for Class 5A schools in West Texas and East Texas because there aren’t many large schools outside of Texas’ metropolitan areas such as Dallas and Fort Worth. During the last realignment in 2008, DeSoto, Mesquite, Mesquite Horn and North Mesquite were placed in District 11-5A with Tyler Lee and Tyler John Tyler.
“When you look at East Texas and West Texas, their population is generally shrinking, so schools are dropping classifications and as schools drop classifications, you have fewer options to align districts,” Odenwald said. “You have to align some schools to those outlying areas and you have to find the schools that are closer.”
DeSoto football coach Claude Mathis and Mesquite ISD athletic director Steve Bragg said they hope to not be placed in a district with teams in East Texas this time around but figure it will likely happen again. Mathis and Bragg said their school district’s travel costs have risen significantly over the last two years because of having to travel so far to play the Tyler teams.
“I hope that the UIL would let someone else have the fun and spread the cost a little bit,” Bragg said.
Added Mathis: “It seems like we always get crapped on. It’s killing us. It’s not a good deal.”
Odenwald said it usually takes a few weeks to get all the maps pinned and the room with all the maps is secured.
“We keep the maps under lock and key,” Odenwald said.
Typically all the realignment decisions are finalized by the end of December, Odenwald said.
After Christmas break, UIL officials return and check and recheck their work to make sure no mistakes are made before the early February announcement takes place.
After the announcement, schools can appeal the UIL’s decision until Feb. 11. Some schools will request to move up in classification and others will appeal to change districts because of travel concerns. The appeals hearings are heard Feb. 18.
“Realignment is always challenging because you want to be fair to all schools,” Odenwald said. “It is a lengthy process. It takes time to do it correctly. There is a lot of thought and a little sweat that goes into trying to get the best possible situation for all schools involved in the alignment.”
Print Shar