The gap between what low-income school boards, the state and North Carolina lawmakers believe is still owed the state’s schoolchildren under the court-approved Leandro plan is about $300 million.

The groups called witnesses and debated in court Friday whether the state still owes $677 million toward education or whether it still owes $377 million.

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The funds would go toward things like early childhood education, special education and expanded support for economically disadvantaged children, among other efforts. The state currently spends more than $10 billion on education.

Most of the debate was over just a few expenses that make up a small fraction of that $300 million difference, however.

And the arguments took place without parties knowing whether the funding would ever be transferred according to the plan, regardless of how much the amount would end up being.

Superior Court Judge James F. Ammons Jr. told parties Friday he’d decide the difference, but he wouldn’t order that the money be transferred.

That’s a matter the North Carolina Supreme Court says it will hear arguments on, at a yet-to-be-determined time. The parties also disagree in that case on what exactly the court should be hearing. The court, under its former Democratic majority, already heard arguments on the transfer order last summer and ordered the fund transfer last fall. The court is now under new Republican majority, which has stated only that some issues in the case appear to be remain undecided.

The lawsuit is Hoke County Board of Education, et. al, v. State of North Carolina, but is commonly known as “Leandro” for a former student plaintiff and his family. It was brought in the mid-1990s by families and school boards in five lower-income counties that alleged their schoolchildren were not receiving an adequate education as promised by the state’s Constitution. Court rulings have favored the plaintiffs.

In 2021, former Superior Court Judge W. David Lee approved a comprehensive remedial plan, known often as the Leandro Plan, that called for changes in education policy and an increase in annual education spending of more than $5.6 billion by the end of an eight-year period.

The current fiscal year is the third year. Last November’s state Supreme Court ruling asked the superior court to decide how much money was owed in the third year and the second year, and then transfer those funds.

State officials and plaintiffs have already agreed that an estimated $677.8 million still needs to be distributed to schools this by June 30 to comply with the plan, but lawmakers have not agreed to that number and have disagreed with the plan itself.

North Carolina Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, and House of Representatives Speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, have asked Ammons, in a 382-page filing, to find that more than $250 million of the plan is no longer owed because the second year of the plan has ended.

“If (the remedial plan) says it takes $50 million to run this year and would have taken $20 million last year, that doesn’t mean it takes $70 million to run this year,” their attorney, Matthew Tilley, argued Friday.

That argument ignores what the Supreme Court order asked for, which was an evaluation of each of the two years, said Scott Bayzle, an attorney for the school boards and families. It would also mean the state would never be held accountable for funding, if the 29-year-old case just kept dragging on in court and more years of the plan ended without funding.

“If we were to accept that argument, the state would never have to implement the (remedial plan),” he said. “It would just delay every year.”