COLUMBUS, Ohio - Ohio Supreme Court justices were wary this morning of how the ECOT online charter school wants to be funded as the school and Ohio Department of Education pleaded their cases to the court.

The department and the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) have been fighting for two years over a shift in how the state views funding for the school - from giving it tax dollars based just on its enrollment to requiring evidence of students participating in their online classes.

After two courts sided with the state and its attempts to recover nearly $80 million in alleged overpayments to the school, the Supreme Court justices heard oral arguments today to make a final resolution of the fight.

The hearing went well over the scheduled 15 minutes per side, with justices peppering lawyers about language in school funding laws, how funding is set for traditional schools as well as online schools like ECOT and about hypothetical and extreme cases to test each side's position.

Department lawyer Douglas Cole repeatedly blasted ECOT's position that it should be paid for every student enrolled at the school, regardless of how long they spend working on their online classes.

"The department says that's an absurd result and the court should be leery about reading that intent (into the law)," Cole said.

His argument appeared to carry weight with Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor, who led most questioning and who grilled ECOT lawyer Marion Little on it near the close of the hearing.

If a student is enrolled at ECOT and does not participate in classes, she asked, did Little believe ECOT should receive full funding?

"If enrollment is the test...that's how it results," Little responded.

"How is it not absurd?" O'Connor asked.

Little said that law does not call for participation in classes for a school to be paid and that the state is improperly mixing funding rules and other measures of how a school is doing.

"There are other ways to test if school is discharging its responsibility," he said.

O'Connor's question was the sharpest against ECOT at the hearing. Justice Terrence O'Donnell had a different approach in his questions for Little and Cole. One sequence of questions allowed Little to affirm key points of the school's argument that charter schools were always paid based on the number of students until the state changed its method in 2016.

Has funding been based on enrollment, O'Donnell asked Little, to which Little said yes.

Did the law change, O'Donnell asked? Little said no.

Did the state's contract with ECOT change? No.

How much weight should the prior pattern of payments be given, O'Donnell then asked?

That pattern matters, Little said. But even more important, he said, the law doesn't allow any change either. Funding laws, he insisted, refer mainly to enrollment, not participation.

"If the general assembly wanted to write participation (in the law), they could have," Little said.

Cole, though, pointed to portions of the law that refer to hours of learning and said the law is clear. Justice Patrick DeWine pressed Little on that language, asking why the law would mention them if they don't matter.

Cole also said it is unfair for ECOT to use the "head in the sand" defense that the department surprised them with the change.

He compared it to being audited by the Internal Revenue Service. Though the IRS may not demand to see receipts for expenses every year, you know you might be asked for them.

The funding change has had a giant impact on the school.

Under the new requirements, ECOT could document class participation of only 6,300 of its 15,300 students for the 2015-16 school year-- a 59% gap - leading the state school board to demand that ECOT repay $60 million.

Then again last September, the state found that for the 2016-17 school year ECOT can properly document about 11,600 of the 14,200 students it claimed. ECOT could not prove that the other 18.5 percent of its students did enough classwork to satisfy the state.

ECOT has returned about $26 million of that money to the state since last July, calculations by State Auditor Dave Yost show. But Yost and the school project that returnng money at the same $4 million-per-month pace would leave ECOT broke by March.

The school was shut down Jan. 19 - at the end of its second quarter - to avoid running out of money mid-term.