Unaudited totals for enrollment this fall put MPS as a whole at 103,766 students, 379 more than was projected in spring when budgeting was done and 369 more than last year's enrollment, MPS officials say.
The increase, if it holds up when the final tally is set, will mark the first time overall enrollment at MPS has been up in at least five years. Last year, the total exceeded projections but still brought a slight decline from the year before that.

The pattern of declines in recent years has been fueled by several major trends, including a steady drop in the total number of school-age children in the city of Milwaukee and the expansion of publicly funded educational options outside MPS.

The options - including state-funded programs that allow low-income children to enroll in private schools or in schools chartered by Milwaukee's city government or the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee - have clearly motivated MPS officials to make changes in what they do, including a highly active marketing program for the school system.

The new figures suggest the school system is making progress in at least holding its share of the education market in the city and most likely increasing it slightly.

It appears unlikely that the gains are coming from the voucher or charter programs, however. Enrollment figures for schools in those programs will be released in the next few days and are expected to show an increase overall.

It is more likely that traditional private school enrollment is one of the areas where declines are showing up most notably. With so many publicly funded options available in the city, the number of people paying tuition to send their children to private schools appears to be in substantial decline.

A fresh report on the MPS annual census of children in the city says that as of June 30, there were 25,066 children in Milwaukee enrolled in private schools, down from 26,479 in 2001 and 28,342 in 2000.

That decline in private school enrollment came at a time when the private school voucher program was growing vigorously. Last year, it totaled more than 10,000 children in Milwaukee. Inevitably, that means the number of tuition-paying, private-school students in the city has declined sharply, although specific numbers are not available.

The total number of children ages 4 to 19 in the city was put by the MPS report at 149,992 as of June 30, down 264 from the prior year but down almost 5,000 from two years before. The long-term trend has been one of decline in that total since the late 1960s, when the total was more than 205,000. Helping MPS finances

The new enrollment figure for MPS is important not only for what it says about the number of parents choosing MPS for their children, but also for what it says about the system's finances. Each child translates ultimately into more than $6,000 a year in federal and state aid, officials say. An enrollment boost of 400, in other words, would mean well over $2 million a year more for schools.

MPS Superintendent William Andrekopoulos said the enrollment increase shows that the system has offerings that meet the needs of a large number of parents but does not change the fact that "we still have a lot of work to do."

He said the system has improved its approach to communicating with parents in recent years, including both the marketing program it has undertaken and the methods it uses for informing parents of the options they have and for handling their choices. He said almost 90% of parents succeed in enrolling their child in the school that was their first choice.

He said the strongly competitive market for school enrollment had made MPS more eager to give parents information. Parents like choice and a sense of being in the driver's seat in deciding where their children will go to school, he said.

MPS spokesman Don Hoffman, who heads the system's marketing effort, said $1.3 million was budgeted this year for projects including television and radio ads and a series of billboards promoting different aspects of the system.

"The enrollment increase is not in any way, shape or form a happenstance," Hoffman said. He said people at every level of the system were more committed to making the schools more appealing to parents and to counteracting what he considered a negative image of MPS often shown in news stories.

Choice an incentive?

The question of whether the existence of the private school choice program has spurred MPS to improve itself is one of the points of debate between supporters and critics of the voucher program.

A new brochure from the Milwaukee-based American Education Reform Council, a strong advocate for the choice program, describes data indicating improvements in MPS in recent years and says predictions that the choice program would harm MPS have not come true.

There is no question, in any case, that the language heard in MPS circles - parents described as customers who need to be won over, for example - has changed as schools of all kinds have tried much harder than in the past to persuade potential students to choose them.

Within the enrollment figures for MPS lie some noteworthy nuggets:

* Enrollment in the Chapter 220 voluntary integration program continues to decline. The state-funded program allows minority students from the city to attend predominantly white schools in the suburbs. A decade ago, more than 5,800 Milwaukee students went to suburban schools using the program. Last year, the total was 4,100, and this year, the preliminary figure was put at 4,067. * On the other hand, the use of the state's open enrollment law for Milwaukee children to attend public school outside the city has increased. Last year, 1,800 students went to suburban public schools; this year, the unaudited figure is 2,133. A large portion of those students are white children not eligible to use Chapter 220. * Enrollment in the traditional roster of Milwaukee public schools was up slightly, from 92,316 last year to 92,502 this year. That reflects slight increases in the totals for elementary and high school students and a dip in the number of middle school students. * Enrollment in non-traditional schools declined slightly, from 5,171 overall last year to 5,064 this year. The schools included in that category include alternative schools, small private schools that contract with MPS to provide programs to some students and charter schools that are affiliated with MPS but do not employ MPS personnel