The New York State Appeals Court has ruled Junior High School 80 in Norwood receive a $3 million grant that was stripped away by the state last year after officials took the near century-old school off a so-called turnaround list for chronically failing schools.

But the grant remains imperiled since the state has one last shot of denying the funds at a hearing in May.

JHS 80, resting on a hilltop on Mosholu Parkway North, was part of a class action lawsuit filed last September claiming the state’s budget director illegally froze taxpayer grants intended to improve school performance for JHS 80. The middle school has experienced an academic decline over the years, and was in danger of closing in 2013. It remained opened, though it was placed on the “persistently failing” schools list, allowing it to apply for a Transformation Grant in 2015 to improve its academic performance.

For Nidia Cortes, a Norwood parent named as one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, seeing the lawsuit through represented something bigger than her or her high school bound 14-year-old daughter. After all, her daughter is in eighth grade and is expected to go to high school in the next school year, when the grant kicks in.

“[I]t’s not just thinking about your kids, but thinking about the other kids,” Cortes, who received very little education while growing up in her native Honduras, said.

The grants, earmarked for mentoring programs for academically at-risk students, available guidance counselors during extended school hours, and staff development, were initially promised for the 2015-16 and 2016-17 school years. The funds, if left unused, would expire in 2018.

“They didn’t even get a chance to use any of that $3 million to implement any of it,” Wendy Lecker, the senior attorney for the Education Law Center (ELC) representing JHS 80, told the Norwood News.

But as JHS 80 was told it received the grant, MaryEllen Elia, the state Education Department’s commissioner, announced it had pulled the school from its list of failing schools in Feb. 2016. This triggered the state’s budget division to deny JHS 80 the funds.  The budget director, Robert Mujica, claimed that the commissioner’s decision to pull the school out of the list caused JHS 80 to lose the funds. In December, New York State Supreme Court Judge Kimberly O’Connor, who presided over the case, did not agree with Mujica’s position, ruling in favor of JHS 80 and ordering the funds be released. The state quickly appealed to the appellate division, where a three-judge panel upheld O’Connor’s ruling on March 27.

JHS 80, a 6th-to-8th grade school comprised of some 600 seats, remains largely under-performing, according to records from the New York City Department of Education. The 2015-16 School Quality Snapshot report showed 14 percent of students passed the state English exam while 16 percent of students passed the state math exam. These marks fall well below the district and citywide English and math test rates, which showed 24 and 20 percent of the district passed the English and math test while 37 and 32 percent of the city passed the state English and math test.

The school, a staple in the Norwood community for close to a century, does have available programs for its academically ambitious students with an accelerated track program that prepares students to take five high school regents exams before the end of the eighth grade year.

Though the state filed the appeal, the court who ruled in ELC’s favor set an appeal hearing for May. Appeal hearings can usually be set nine months from the time they’re filed, but Lecker noted the judge’s confidence in the strength of ELC’s case indicates the judge’s desire to see the case end. Should the ELC win its case, JHS 80 can start implementing grant-funded programming by next September.

Lecker, who maintains ELC will win the case, said the latest victory clears the schools to “restore these programs to improve performance and help their students succeed.”

Still, the possibility for the school to be deprived of the grant stands as a reality. “If the funds are not in our [school] budget before July 1, 2017, it will be very difficult for JHS 80 to implement any of the programs funded by the grant in the 2017-18 school year,” wrote Emmanuel Polanco, JHS 80’s principal, in an affidavit.

Polanco told the Norwood News the campaign to retrieve the grant was “to ensure

that our schools receive these promised resources as intended.”

He added, “We value the shared responsibility and accountability as we support the needs of our communities. We are grateful that we will receive these funds and continue to deliver more for our students and families.”

A representative for the state’s budget division did not respond to a request for comment.