Students arriving at P.S. 194 in Harlem on the first day of school this year encountered an unusual banner hanging on the front fence: “Believe. Achieve. Succeed.”

Beside it, administrators welcomed eager students and spoke with parents who wondered what time the school day ended. Inside, newcomers and their parents gathered in the cafeteria to meet their teachers.

None of this was supposed to happen – not at P.S. 194. Last winter, the Department of Education announced the school’s closure, a result of failing grades on the previous two years’ progress reports: an F, then a D. The department told parents of incoming first graders to find new schools and advised students already enrolled that they would be transferred out over the next few years.

Plans were so advanced that Harlem Success Academy 2, a charter school, was poised to take over the lower-level floors P.S. 194 occupies in the expansive building they share on 144th Street, west of Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard.

Less than a year later, P.S. 194 is flourishing; it earned an A on its most recent progress report.

And its reputation has spread. Boubacar Dialo and his wife transferred their fourth and fifth grade daughters to P.S. 194 this fall. “My wife checked here and saw that this was the best school in Harlem,” he said after dropping the girls off.

Actions by families and by the United Federation of Teachers have kept the school alive. The union objected to the expected job cuts and filed a lawsuit in March in conjunction with the New York Civil Liberties Union, charging that the Department of Education was closing the school without proper approval from the community education council. The Department didn’t offer a “fair process to allow parental input into decision making,” said David Eisenberg, one of the Civil Liberties Union’s lead lawyers on the case.

The Department backed down in the spring. Had the lawsuit not been filed, Eisenberg firmly believes that P.S. 194 would not have gotten a second chance.

Parents were also outraged: they saw progress under principal Charyn Koppelson Cleary, who was only four months into the job, and thought she deserved more time. In protest, they wrote letters to Chancellor Joel Klein and turned out in droves for a public hearing in March.

“They brought the new principal and she was really running the school the way it is supposed to be,” said Samka Cekic, whose children are in the third and fifth grades at P.S. 194.

Cleary’s work was cut out for her – 13 percent of the school’s students were classified as English Language Learners last year, meaning English is not their native tongue, and P.S. 194 had four principals in five years – but she was intent on succeeding. “I didn’t come here to maintain status quo. I came here to turn a building upside down if necessary,” she said in an interview, adding, “If for whatever reason we just don’t get the job done, you ruin a kid’s life.”

Her plan started with staff training. So many teachers had come and gone over the past few years that she felt the staff lacked a cohesive vision and failed to follow curriculum guidelines.

For help, she hired Philomena Nortey from P.S. 111, whom Cleary describes as an expert in leadership and curriculum mapping. She also hired other teachers who have what she labeled “a level of tolerance and understanding.”

This staff started a mentoring program called the P.S. 194 Jewels, in which teachers provide help with homework after school; Cleary often contributes her time.

She also emphasized tracking student performance. Teachers and administrators have online access to student assessments going back to kindergarten, but parents rarely see the data. Cleary encouraged parents to follow their kids’ performance. To assist families without Internet access, P.S. 194’s parent coordinator, Clara Pena, sat outside the school with a laptop to catch parents walking by.

After a grueling year, Cleary was ecstatic at the results. “We let out such screams in this building when we saw that preliminary A that the people downstairs thought something had happened,” she said.

Parents noticed the changes. “Now you have teachers who go beyond the call of duty to do things for the kids,” said parent Shanequa Gadson, who attended P.S. 194 herself.

Dettering Hamilton, whose daughter transferred from P.S. 200 last January because he felt its teachers were ineffective, found that after a few weeks at P.S. 194, her attitude and performance turned around.

He fought the school’s scheduled close, feeling that Harlem Success Academy 2 was “pushing in and pitting parents against one another,” and he took offense at what he thought was a disregard for the public school system.

Despite its recent success, P.S. 194 faces an uphill battle. Like principals throughout the city this fall, Cleary had to cut her budget – by $450,000, enough to have hired several teachers or to start a music program, she said.

She also knows test results must continue to improve. “You’re only as good as this year’s scores,” she said.