New Title IX Regulations Pushed to October 2023
Education leaders can rest a little easier this summer – the Title IX federal regulations slated for a May 2023 release have been delayed until October 2023, per a federal Department of Education (DOE) announcement. Why the delay? An unprecedent 240,000+ comments were submitted regarding the proposed regulations, and the DOE must respond to every last one of them.
Practically speaking, this is good news for education institutions. It means there will not be a repeat of summer 2020, when the federal government released new regulations in May to be implemented by August. School administrators and elected education officials who scrambled to meet this tight turnaround will be relieved to know it will not be happening again during summer 2023.
What will an October 2023 release of federal Title IX regulations mean for schools? Another three-month deadline would be ill-advised, considering how onerous and confusing it would be to update Title IX policies in the middle of the school year. A more reasonable timeline would be to allow schools until August 2024 to update their Title IX policies. This would allow nine months for policies to be revised and implemented, and for students and staff to be trained on the new requirements that would go in place for the 2024-25 school year.
Hopefully this will be the last Title IX update for some time. The back and forth from the federal government has proven burdensome and costly to education institutions. It is a substantial undertaking for schools to amend their Title IX policies, and they will soon be required to do so for the second time in five years. School communities will also struggle to understand and embrace Title IX requirements if they are amended frequently.
In short, as of June 2023, there are no new federal Title IX regulations yet, but they will be here soon. Education institutions should anticipate new regulations being issued in October 2023 and plan accordingly. Strong training programs will be essential to implementing these updates. Schedule Title IX training for your staff for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school year through T9 Mastered, a division of Van Dermyden Makus. Contact Liz DeChellis, VM’s Title IX Program Director and T9 Mastered Instructor, to discuss how to best educate your community about Title IX and the anticipated regulations.
