Toledo Public Schools appears to have stopped its enrollment loss, as preliminary data show the district gained students for the first time in nearly two decades.

The district counted 22,256 stu-dents Friday, compared with 22,199 at this time last year. It’s a small increase, but for TPS, it’s a major win.

“It’s a reversal of a trend. It really does encourage you that we are on the right path,” TPS Chief Academic Officer Jim Gault said. “We will celebrate this small win, and keep our momentum going.”

Historical enrollment data can be murky, because student counts can change day to day, and there are several ways to count it. Enrollment can be a straight head count, the average of students over a period of time, or an average calculated based on the number of days a student actually shows up to school.

And year-to-year comparisons aren’t always exact, as the first day of school starts on different days each year. The current TPS data is for Friday, while last year’s was for Oct. 6.

Enrollment at large urban schools is also notoriously fluid, with students transferring to charter schools, dropping out, or leaving the district at higher rates than in suburban districts.

But any way you calculate it, the numbers are a positive sign for TPS, which has continuously lost students since the mid 1990s, when enrollment averaged about 40,000.

It’s been so long since TPS gained students that district leaders said they could only guess at the last time enrollment grew.

Mr. Gault joked that the school system hasn’t added students since The Cosby Show was on television.

He’s not quite right, according to state data.

The last time TPS saw a year-to-year growth in students in the fall was 1996, while The Cosby Show last aired in 1992.

How the apparent enrollment increase will affect TPS finances isn’t clear because of a change in state calculations.

Traditionally, the Ohio Department of Education used the first full week of October to calculate the average daily membership, or average number of enrolled students, to determine state funding for districts.

But that approach was criticized by State Auditor Dave Yost in 2012 in his office’s investigation into attendance-data-scrubbing allegations against multiple districts, including TPS. Schools felt an incentive to focus on enrollment in October and then let students drop out, as they’d likely get paid for them anyway.

The state legislature changed the rules, and enrollment updates will now be done in October, May, and June, with the state adjusting payments based on whether students have left or entered a district.

That change means TPS can’t yet bank on increased state funding, district treasurer Matt Cleland said.

“That’s kind of the big thing, not knowing how all that will shake out,” he said.

Enrollment at suburban districts was mostly stable. Smaller districts can see year-to-year changes simply from changes in birth rates. 

Enrollment at Springfield Local Schools, for example, dipped from 4,168 to 4,117, with most of that decline because of a smaller-than-average kindergarten class, district spokesman Kristina White said.

Within TPS, two high schools that had suffered sustained enrollment declines showed surprisingly significant upticks this year. Scott High School went from 553 students last year to 634 this year, while Woodward High School went from 597 to 657.

Mr. Gault credited sustained outreach in neighborhoods over the summer for the growth at those schools.

The addition of seventh and eighth grades paid off at the Toledo Technology Academy, with enrollment up to 287 from 186 last year.

There are 108 junior high students at the technology academy, and the district had a waiting list for those grades, Mr. Gault said.

Contact Nolan Rosenkrans at: nrosenkrans@theblade.com or 419-724-6086, or on Twitter @NolanRosenkrans.

First Published October 4, 2014, 4:06 a.m.