Opinion ID: 1328029
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Federal Funds

Text: Although plaintiff-intervenors have not yet presented their case before the trial court, this Court allowed certiorari for review of plaintiff-intervenors' issue concerning the trial court's ruling on the State's use of federal funds targeting education. We address the issue now for two reasons. First, the trial court allowed plaintiff-intervenors' motion to participate in plaintiffs' trial. Therefore, plaintiff-intervenors have a right, as party participants, to complain of errors committed during plaintiffs' proceedings. Second, the issue raised by plaintiff-intervenors will affect the scope of plaintiff-intervenors' forthcoming trial. As a consequence, we address the issue here in order to preempt the potential for error during plaintiff-intervenors' case. Plaintiff-intervenors contend that the trial court erred by including educational services provided by federal funds, including Title I funds, [19] as part of its calculations for determining whether the State has met its constitutional obligation to provide all North Carolina children with an equal opportunity to obtain a sound basic education. Plaintiff-intervenors' argument requires us to conduct a two-part inquiry: (1) did the trial court improperly condone the State's use of Title I funds, in violation of 20 U.S.C. § 6321(b)(1); and, (2) did the trial court improperly condone the State's use of such federal funds, in violation of the North Carolina Constitution? For the reasons cited herein, we conclude that the trial court's consideration of Title I funds did not violate either the applicable federal statutory provisions or the education provisions of our state's Constitution. In addition, we hold that the relevant provisions of the North Carolina Constitution do not forbid the State from including federal funds in its formula for providing the state's children with the opportunity to obtain a sound basic education. While the State has a duty to provide the means for such educational opportunity, no statutory or constitutional provisions require that it is concomitantly obliged to be the exclusive source of the opportunity's funding. In fact, the State and its education agents often position themselves to augment state educational funding requirements by designing and implementing education-related programs  i.e., Bright Beginnings  that qualify for federal subsidies, thereby providing education funds that contribute to the State's effort of providing a Leandro -conforming educational opportunity for North Carolina's children. While the questions of whether federal funds are supplanting or supplementing state education contributions and whether they must do one or the other are debated vigorously by the parties, see 20 U.S.C. § 6321(b)(1) (requiring that federal funds received thereunder be used only to supplement funds that would be made available from non-federal sources and not to supplant such non-federal funds), we decline to enter the fray at this point for two reasons. First, the questions concerning the proper use of federal education funds are controlled by federal law, which specifically grants the United States Secretary of Education (Secretary) the authority to decide how such funds are distributed. See id. § 1234(a) (2002) (stating that the Secretary shall establish an Office of Administrative Law Judges which shall conduct hearings on recovery of and withholding of funds); and Bell V. New Jersey, 461 U.S. 773, 791, 103 s.ct. 2187, 2197, 76 l.ed.2d 312, 327 (1983) (stating that the initial determination that a State has misapplied Title I funds is to be made administratively, by the Secretary). Thus, the question of deciding precisely what constitutes a supplementation or a supplantation, a complex question of federal law that this Court is ill-positioned to answer, is one that the federal statutory scheme clearly places in the hands of the Secretary. While plaintiff-intervenors argue that the facts in evidence show that certain North Carolina programs violate the supplement-not-supplant mandate, we note that plaintiff-intervenors point to no instance where the Secretary has either refused or withdrawn funding because such funds were being used in violation of 20 U.S.C. § 6321(b)(1). Second, we can find no evidence of clear fault on the part of the State from the funding examples presented at trial or in the plaintiff-intervenors' appellate brief. As a consequence, we can glean from the record no justification that would compel this Court to trespass on the Secretary's deeded turf. We recognize that if the Secretary, at some point, were to determine that the State was no longer adhering to the supplement-not-supplant provisions governing use of federal education funds, this Court may have to reconsider the issue in order to decide: (1) if the funding in question was part of the State's effort to provide children with a sound basic education; and (2) whether the State was obliged to provide substitute funding on its own. However, because such a circumstance has not presented itself in the case at hand, any holding as to its potential effects would amount to mere speculation on the part of this Court. Therefore, in confining our view of the issue to the facts as presented at trial, we conclude that the trial court did not err when it determined that the State was making use of federal education funds in accordance with the applicable federal statutes and the applicable education provisions of the North Carolina Constitution.