On July 10, 2026, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights issued a Dear Colleague Letter reminding schools of their responsibilities regarding sexual misconduct by school employees. In a related press release, OCR announced a national K-12 enforcement initiative including 20 directed investigations of school districts selected based on their 2023-24 Civil Rights Data Collection submissions.

Against the backdrop of deep staffing cuts, closed regional offices, an ambiguous new relationship with the Department of Justice, and news suggesting that OCR is focusing on hot-button political issues like gender identity, DEI, and antisemitism instead of bread-and-butter issues, the letter is a welcome sign that OCR still views protecting children from sexual misconduct in schools as a core responsibility.

We have long known that predators seek out school environments to access children, and sexual misconduct has historically made up a significant share of K–12 Title IX cases. Considering data from a report by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) showing that OCR resolved zero cases alleging sexual harassment or sexual violence in 2025, one hopes the DCL is a sign that the federal government will begin to take such allegations seriously again.

So what’s in the letter? As is often the case with DCLs, the letter is primarily a restatement of existing law. But buried in the familiar recitations are several enforcement signals that K-12 administrators and Title IX coordinators should take seriously. Here’s what your elementary or secondary school needs to know and do with this information.

What the DCL Says

Most of the letter reiterates obligations districts already have, though it presses some of them in new directions:

Schools must respond any time an employee knows that sexual misconduct might be occurring. Under Title IX, once any K-12 school employee has notice of potential sexual harassment in a school education program or activity, the district must respond promptly and in a manner that is not deliberately indifferent, including by offering supportive measures to the alleged victim. This “actual knowledge” standard is higher than the one from Obama-era guidance, which required schools to respond when an employee knew or should have known of misconduct. In my experience, though, some educators read the current standard far too narrowly, assuming they don’t have “knowledge” unless they believe in or have compelling evidence supporting the allegation at the time of the report. In fact, the duty to respond does not depend on whether the report seems credible or substantiated. Any information suggesting misconduct might have happened can be enough to trigger it, including unsupported allegations, secondhand accounts, and rumors. Deciding whether the conduct actually occurred is what the investigation and decision-making processes are for.

Referral to law enforcement alone is not an adequate response under Title IX. For almost two decades now, OCR has consistently maintained that districts must run their own Title IX grievance process, even when police or child protective services are involved. Coordinating timing with law enforcement is permissible, including delays in timing to allow the police to complete their factual investigation. But, as the DCL reiterates, the school’s responsibility remains and is separate from the police process. In my practice, I still encounter far too many schools that respond, “This is a police matter,” when serious sexual misconduct is reported. The response should never end there.

Collective bargaining agreements are a target. The letter states that CBA provisions that “prevent, delay, or condition” the investigation or removal of an employee pending a Title IX investigation can expose a district to enforcement action, citing an open investigation at LAUSD as an example. The general principle that federal law preempts conflicting CBA terms is uncontroversial. The DCL’s application, however, is more novel. The 2020 regulations don’t require the removal of accused employees; they permit administrative leave. So, a CBA that requires reassignment rather than termination during an investigation isn’t obviously a Title IX violation. But the DCL treats such provisions as presumptively suspect. Notably, LAUSD disputes the premise. The district told K-12 Dive that “reassignment” in this context typically means an employee is directed to remain at home and away from students and schools during the investigation. If that is accurate, the challenged provision appears to be similar to the administrative leave that the 2020 regulations expressly permit. Nonetheless, the DCL is giving a clear message that it will read your CBA, and provisions that appear to insulate employees from interim measures may invite an OCR complaint.

Federal law requires states to prevent schools from helping employees believed to have sexually abused a minor obtain employment elsewhere, which OCR appears to interpret as limiting certain settlement agreement terms and personnel record practices. Since 2015, the Every Student Succeeds Act has required states to have laws, regulations, or policies prohibiting school employees and agencies from helping an employee get a new job when there’s knowledge or probable cause to believe the person engaged in sexual misconduct involving a minor or student. Routine transmission of personnel files is carved out. According to the DCL, as of 2022, 35 states lacked laws banning the suppression of information about employee sexual misconduct in termination, resignation, and severance agreements, and 40 lacked laws prohibiting the expungement of that information from personnel files. The clear implication is that ED believes the absence of those laws is evidence that a state’s measures are inadequate—even though the statute doesn’t require them and the DCL concedes in a footnote that the law bars ED from mandating, directing, or controlling the “specific measures” a state adopts. Districts negotiating quiet resignations with neutral references in misconduct cases should understand that this practice is now squarely in OCR’s crosshairs.

Whistleblowers who report sexual misconduct are protected from retaliation. The DCL reminds schools that retaliation against any employee or student who reports sexual misconduct, whether through adverse employment action, intimidation, or any other means, violates Title IX. The letter’s express inclusion of employees is a good reminder that a staff member who reports a colleague is protected, and any retaliatory blowback for making the report is itself a federal violation on top of the underlying misconduct. It seems likely that OCR would stretch that protection to an employee who reports “passing the trash” by their district, as well.

New Enforcement Efforts

Although OCR has not released which districts were among the 20 selected for its new national K-12 enforcement initiative, and OCR’s once-public list of open investigations has not been updated under this administration, OCR said the targets of the new inquiries under the DCL were chosen because their CRDC data responses “suggest that [they] might not be addressing staff-on-student sexual misconduct appropriately.”

The press release itself points to the likely trigger, warning that districts reporting zero incidents of rape or sexual assault “despite evidence suggesting otherwise” may face OCR enforcement. When might that occur? Picture a district that submits zeros in its CRDC data while the local paper reports that a staff member was arrested, a student or parent filed a lawsuit, or the state commenced a licensure action about alleged employee sexual misconduct.

The DCL also openly solicits complaints from “anyone who believes” a district responded inadequately, so expect complaint volume to rise. When I worked at OCR, one of my favorite tasks was searching local news reports for problems the press had identified that we might investigate. People would also send information about issues in a local school district to OCR, even when they lacked standing to file a complaint themselves. So, schools should not assume that OCR enforcement starts only when someone files a complaint. The DCL is a reminder that when OCR has information from almost any source suggesting that a district may be suppressing incidents of sexual misconduct, that can invite exactly the kind of directed investigation announced alongside the DCL.

The Current Reality of OCR Funding Threats

What happens if OCR believes your school district is violating the federal laws addressed in the DCL? ESSA is primarily administered by the Department of Education’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE) and state educational agencies—not OCR. Nevertheless, the Dear Colleague Letter repeatedly invokes the possibility of federal funding termination and frames many of its recommendations as Title IX obligations.

Although OCR does not ordinarily enforce ESSA directly, the letter suggests the agency may pursue conduct that also implicates ESSA through its Title IX enforcement authority. In light of that threat, it is worth considering how dramatically the landscape has shifted regarding OCR’s threats to terminate federal funding. On paper, funding termination remains a lengthy process requiring an investigation, efforts to negotiate voluntary compliance, an administrative hearing, and notice to Congress. Historically, this was a lengthy process in which the educational institution had numerous opportunities to state its case, disagree with OCR’s findings, and negotiate terms of an agreement.

As I’ve discussed on my blog before, this OCR has been wielding the funding threat in a very different way. Schools are often getting almost no process. To date, few institutions have stepped up to challenge OCR’s complete reworking of the process for stripping institutions of federal funds, making the risk of funding threats all too real. And although OCR has been doing this without any real authority, regulatory changes may soon codify that approach. The Department’s newly released regulatory agenda includes plans to amend OCR’s enforcement regulations, a change Insight Into Academia reports is intended to speed up the process for cutting off federal funds from institutions found to have violated civil rights laws.

What to Do Now

So what should your K-12 school or district do in response to the guidance? A practical audit includes the following:

Offer annual training to all employees on reporting requirements. Canned videos from compliance networks may not be sufficient. I offer affordable, short videos tailored to your institution that cover what employees at all levels, including K-12, actually need to know about Title IX. Reach out to me for more information.

Confirm concurrent law enforcement protocols. Check that nothing in your Title IX policy suggests the district can wait out a criminal case before responding, and consider adding language to procedural or protocol documents clarifying how staff should handle concurrent law enforcement activity. At a minimum, I recommend that schools reach out to the complainant, offer supportive measures, notify them of their right to file a formal complaint under Title IX, and, once any law enforcement process has been completed, assess what, if any, additional action the school must take. In some cases, that final step will be as simple as providing the complainant a letter saying that an incarcerated former employee was found to have engaged in sexual misconduct, based on information obtained from the police process. But if law enforcement decides not to pursue criminal charges or fails in that effort, that does not mean the case automatically fails under Title IX. The Title IX process uses a much lower “preponderance” standard than criminal proceedings do, which the school must apply to a case regardless of what law enforcement decided. In other words, you can rely on the police’s gathered evidence, if they share it with you, but you cannot rely on their decision to find insufficient evidence that Title IX misconduct occurred.

Audit open Title IX files. The letter specifically calls out investigations that were opened but never completed and complaints that were closed without meaningful inquiry. Go back and look. If you have stale files, close them properly. I have done this review numerous times, both inside and outside OCR, so reach out if you need help with it.

Review your CBAs. Flag any provision that could be interpreted to delay an investigation, restrict interim reassignment or leave, require the destruction of disciplinary records, or limit what may be included in a personnel file. Remember that ambiguity in language can lead to situations like the one LAUSD is in, where it says OCR is misreading its CBA. Say what you mean and mean what you say in your agreements. Even if you can’t change an agreement mid-term, you may be able to create a record of what a provision means—and doesn’t mean—without changing the language, and then plan to remove any ambiguity the next bargaining cycle.

Review past separation agreements and practices and consider new templates. Remember that federal law does not directly prohibit clauses that suppress misconduct information or promise clean references where there’s knowledge or probable cause of sexual misconduct involving a student, but the DCL makes clear that OCR disfavors them. At a minimum, have such clauses reviewed by a knowledgeable education civil-rights lawyer who can review your entire system to determine whether such practices, individually or in combination, amount to assisting an employee in obtaining a new job despite knowledge or probable cause of sexual misconduct involving a minor or student, which is what ESEA requires states to prohibit. The routine transmission of administrative and personnel files is the statute’s safe harbor, so counsel should also confirm that your reference and file-transfer practices fall within that limitation and comply with any state pass-the-trash law, which may go further than the federal floor. Consider adopting approved standard templates so staff turnover doesn’t lead to improvised agreements and avoidable mistakes.

Check your CRDC data now, not at the next collection. Verify that your district has a real mechanism for counting staff-on-student incidents, that the people completing the CRDC know where that data lives, and that your reported numbers can be reconciled with your Title IX case logs. If you are showing zero or very few incidents, be wary. As I often say in trainings, a district that thinks it has no sexual misconduct problem usually doesn’t have a clean record—it more often has a blind spot.

The letter’s rhetoric is heated, and parts of its legal analysis outrun the underlying authorities. But the core message is one districts should have been following all along: don’t pass the trash, and don’t let CBAs or quiet settlements swallow your Title IX obligations. The difference now is that someone in Washington says they’re checking.

This post is general information, not legal advice. Contact me at jackie@educationcivilrights.com about your specific policies and agreements.

Against the backdrop of deep staffing cuts, closed regional offices, an ambiguous new relationship with the Department of Justice, and news suggesting that OCR is focusing on hot-button political issues like gender identity, DEI, and antisemitism instead of bread-and-butter issues, the letter is a welcome sign that OCR still views protecting children from sexual misconduct in schools as a core responsibility.

What the DCL Says

Most of the letter reiterates obligations districts already have, though it presses some of them in new directions:

Schools must respond any time an employee knows that sexual misconduct might be occurring. Under Title IX, once any K-12 school employee has notice of potential sexual harassment in a school education program or activity, the district must respond promptly and in a manner that is not deliberately indifferent. The duty to respond does not depend on whether the report seems credible or substantiated.

Referral to law enforcement alone is not an adequate response under Title IX. For almost two decades now, OCR has consistently maintained that districts must run their own Title IX grievance process, even when police or child protective services are involved. I still encounter far too many schools that respond, "This is a police matter," when serious sexual misconduct is reported. The response should never end there.

Collective bargaining agreements are a target. The letter states that CBA provisions that "prevent, delay, or condition" the investigation or removal of an employee pending a Title IX investigation can expose a district to enforcement action. Districts negotiating quiet resignations with neutral references in misconduct cases should understand that this practice is now squarely in OCR's crosshairs.

Whistleblowers who report sexual misconduct are protected from retaliation. The DCL reminds schools that retaliation against any employee or student who reports sexual misconduct violates Title IX.

What to Do Now

A practical audit includes: offering annual training to all employees on reporting requirements; confirming concurrent law enforcement protocols; auditing open Title IX files; reviewing your CBAs; reviewing past separation agreements; and checking your CRDC data now, not at the next collection.

The letter's rhetoric is heated, and parts of its legal analysis outrun the underlying authorities. But the core message is one districts should have been following all along: don't pass the trash, and don't let CBAs or quiet settlements swallow your Title IX obligations.

This post is general information, not legal advice. Contact Jackie at jackie@educationcivilrights.com about your specific policies and agreements.