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KTSM News – Explaining what is behind UIL’s realignment

Posted on February 3, 2024

EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) — The University Interscholastic League’s (UIL) new district realignments and reclassifications are not only bringing changes for local school sports but for academics as well. 

The realignments are based on enrollment sizes at high schools around El Paso. Those changes are going into effect for the 2024-25 and 2025-26 school years. 

Socorro Independent School District has two campuses that dropped in classification. Starting this upcoming school year, Americas High School and El Dorado High School will belong to the class 5A division. 

James Nunn, SISD’s director of athletics said: “The way our own district is growing in nature, we’re growing a little more east and so some of our older neighborhoods have not had the same population coming in and out, so we do have decline in some of those areas.” 

Nunn said it’s not necessarily a decline, but numbers are not matching the enrollment seen in other areas. 

“We may not have made a change, but because other areas increased their enrollment or population that’s where we get the decrease in our classification,” he said. 

Tom Fullerton, an economics professor at the University of Texas at El Paso, reiterated this statement. He said, “The legacy school districts have a lot of older households whose children have already graduated from high school. The younger families are looking for housing but because housing tends to not be available in the districts where the grandparent families are still living, they tend to move to the fast-growing areas of town where new housing is becoming available.” 

Fullerton said in addition to people without school-aged children staying in “legacy” neighborhoods, El Paso’s fertility rate has been on the decline.  

“The number of births on a per-capita basis has been declining in El Paso for a long time,” Fullerton said. “That’s one thing that’s affecting school enrollments.” 

Fullerton also said the reclassification is part of a growth cycle, that while retirees are moving away, and housing becomes more available, these legacy districts can expect enrollment to fluctuate with the population changes. 

Overall, Nunn said he doesn’t view the realignments as a bad thing. 

“Reclassifying gives our students the overall opportunity to compete with schools of similar size across the state that would allow for competitive balance and opportunities for success,” he said.

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