Just a few years ago, Toledo Public Schools projected huge budget deficits. Now, the district’s finances are in significantly better shape.

The Toledo Board of Education voted Tuesday to adopt a five-year budget forecastthat shows the district will have a $12 million unrestricted fund balance in 2019.

That doesn’t mean TPS will be swimming in money, but it is major financial progress compared with 2013, when the district projected a best-case scenario of a more than $100 million negative balance by 2017.

If state funding had remained flat and a voters had rejected a renewal levy, TPS Treasurer Matt Cleland said at the time that the district’s account would be nearly $250 million in the red by 2017.

“The five-year forecast looks quite nice now,” Mr. Cleland said.

State funding for schools has increased since 2013, and voters approved a renewal levy that year. The big change to the budget, however, came this fall, when Toledo voters approved a new-money levy for the first time since 2001. That five-year levy added $13.3 million a year to the district’s budget.

The budget, of course, is a document of assumptions that can change for myriad reasons. A school system’s biggest expense is staff salaries, and the Toledo district is likely set to see those rise this year. That’s because contracts signed in 2013 with the district’s three employee unions include wage reopeners this year. The district is in negotiations with its unions on those issues now. Employees received 1 percent raises the past two years, after back-to-back regressive contracts.

Dozens of members of the Toledo Federation of Teachers attended Tuesday’s board meeting and applauded after union President Kevin Dalton addressed the board. Tension has brewed in recent months between district administration and the union, and Mr. Dalton criticized what he called recent attacks on teacher seniority and unwise financial investments that he said could have been better spent on staff.

“It’s time to invest in what your biggest return of investment will be in students,” Mr. Dalton said.

Mr. Cleland did not budget wage scale increases for employees, according to the forecast’s notes.

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

First Published May 27, 2015, 4:00 a.m.