The Office for Civil Rights, Department of Education, works with
parents, educational administrators, teachers, and others to ensure
that students have a safe and secure environment that is conducive to
learning and that affords students equal educational opportunities
regardless of their sex. Sexual harassment of a student, if not
appropriately addressed, can have serious, detrimental consequences
for the student, impedes the student's education, and constitutes a
breach of trust between the school and the student. For this reason,
eliminating sexual harassment from the nation's schools is a high
priority for OCR and has motivated OCR to take steps, discussed in
more detail previously in this conversation, including issuing sexual
harassment guidance, resolving cases, providing technical assistance,
and sending letters to school districts and institutions of higher
education, urging them to take all steps necessary to comply with
Title IX.
It would be inappropriate to discuss in this forum any individual's
dissatisfaction with OCR's handling of any specific case. As noted
earlier in our conversation, OCR's case resolution approaches are
geared to resolve the complainant's allegations of discrimination
promptly and appropriately and permit OCR to provide timely and
effective intervention at the beginning of the complaint process,
focus on achieving institutional change, if appropriate, and make
students, parents, and school officials central to the resolution of
complaints. In terms of Title IX enforcement, it is essential to
reiterate that when Congress enacted Title IX, it required OCR first
to ensure that compliance cannot be achieved voluntarily before taking
the steps necessary to terminate federal funds from a recipient for
noncompliance. OCR has been able to negotiate voluntary compliance in
our Title IX cases, consistent with the Congressional mandate.
Staff from the Department of Education always benefit from hearing the
best thinking of people who work with sexual harassment issues every
day and from hearing the questions that arise from people who are
interested in sexual harassment issues. We also appreciate any
opportunity to provide information about OCR's sexual harassment
guidance, case resolution procedures, and technical assistance
efforts. For these reasons we are very thankful for the opportunity
to participate in this conversation and to everyone who took the time
to ask questions or read our responses. We look forward to working
with you in the future to achieve our goal of ensuring equal
educational opportunities to students regardless of their sex.
Lisa Battalia
Lisa_Battalia@ed.gov
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