Academic Calendar Looks Different for 2017-18

By Lauren Kelley, UIL Intern | Wednesday, November 01, 2017 3:32 PM

The UIL Academic department would like to remind schools of important spring dates and events.

The UIL Academics State Meet will take place the first weekend in May, from Thursday May 3 to Saturday May 5. The ILPC State Convention will take place concurrently with the State Meet from May 5-6.

“The State Meet is in May as opposed to April because we try to schedule it so it falls between the academic region meet and state track meet,” UIL Academics Director Dr. David Stevens said.

Academic district events will take place from March 19 to March 24. UIL Speech and debate district events may take place during that same week or during the next week from March 26-31.

“We decided to give speech events additional time because there was a concern that we would not have enough judges to do all 192 districts in one week,” Stevens said. “Therefore, we extended speaking events to have another week.”

Until last year, academics offered two weeks of district and two respective tests for each. Last year, UIL Academic district was shortened to one week because of calendar conflicts and to help with test confidentiality.

“With only one district test, there’s no chance of that test getting out,” Stevens said. “In the past, even though we created a separate test for district week two, there were issues that people were getting copies of the district one test. They could at least have an idea of what it was going to be.”