U.S. District Judge Price Marshall signed off on the pact after hearing several hours of testimony from opponents of the deal and lawyers for the signees: the state, the districts and black schoolchildren.
Since 1989, the state has given the Little Rock, North Little Rock and Pulaski County Special school districts more than $1 billion, total, above their regular state appropriations. The money — about $70 million this fiscal year — goes toward magnet schools and transporting students from districts where they'd be in the majority to those where they'd be in the minority.
The state has wanted to halt the payments for years, and Marshall had scheduled a March trial to hear Attorney General Dustin McDaniel's lawsuit seeking the arrangement's immediate end.
