From Compliance to Outcomes: Improving Attendance and Behavior with Title-Funded Engagement

For district administrators and campus leaders, managing Title funds, specifically Title I (Improving Academic Achievement) and Title III (Language Instruction for Multilingual Learners), often means balancing two priorities: meeting strict federal requirements and making real progress on high-stakes district improvement plans (DIPs) and campus improvement plans (CIPs).

Two metrics come up in these improvement plans across the country more than any others: chronic absenteeism and disruptive classroom behavior.

Traditional approaches treat behavior and attendance as separate, in-school problems. Research shows that lasting improvement requires real alignment between home and school. By using Title funds for Frankly, districts can address the root causes of chronic absenteeism and behavior challenges while staying fully compliant with federal funding rules.

Linking Title funds to DIP and CIP goals

Federal Title dollars are meant to supplement district initiatives that serve at-risk and multilingual students. When it's aligned with school improvement goals, Frankly works as a Tier 1 intervention that connects home environments with classroom expectations.

The logic runs in a straight line. Title I and Title III funds pay for evidence-based parent capacity tools (Frankly). Those tools build shared language and co-regulation at home. That shared foundation leads to two outcomes: reduced chronic absenteeism, through a stronger home-school bond, and improved classroom behavior, through consistent emotional regulation.

1. Improving attendance by building relational trust

Strategic goal: Decrease chronic absenteeism by strengthening school-family partnerships and establishing predictable home routines.

The challenge: Most attendance interventions are reactive: automated warning letters, or truancy meetings scheduled after a student has already missed critical days. These tactics often alienate families and leave the underlying barriers untouched, such as chaotic mornings, anxiety, or disconnection from the school community.

How Frankly improves attendance:

• Morning and evening routines: The Frankly platform gives parents practical, bite-sized strategies for building structured routines at home, which cut down on morning friction and help students arrive on time and ready to learn.
• Culturally responsive outreach: With tools like the Frankly Lotería Family Night, campuses host welcoming, high-trust events that make the school a center of community support. Families who feel valued and connected to their school community are significantly more likely to prioritize daily attendance.
• Proactive Connection Decks: Physical card decks give families low-stress, screen-free ways to talk about school anxiety, friendships, and goals, so home becomes a place that encourages kids to show up every day.

Title funding alignment:

• Title I, Sec. 1116 supports activities that build parents' capacity to monitor progress and partner with educators to improve student outcomes.
• Title III, Sec. 3115 funds supplemental community outreach that helps English Learners overcome non-academic barriers to school participation.

2. Reducing behavior disruptions through shared regulation

Strategic goal: Reduce office discipline referrals (ODRs) and suspension rates by building emotional regulation skills at home and in the classroom.

The challenge: When children struggle with emotional regulation, those difficulties follow them into the classroom, which costs instructional time and drives up behavior referrals. And when educators and parents handle behavior in conflicting ways, students get mixed signals that make the problem worse.

How Frankly improves behavior:

• Common language for co-regulation: Grounded in evidence-based frameworks like Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI), Frankly teaches families practical regulation techniques (for example, naming emotions and taking co-regulation breaks) that mirror the social-emotional strategies educators use in the classroom.
• Staff professional development (Oxygen Mask Moments): To keep home and school aligned, Frankly provides short, 5- to 10-minute professional learning modules for school staff. Teachers learn trauma-informed communication strategies that match what families receive in the app, which helps stop discipline issues before they escalate.
• Collaborative Behavior Conference Guides: In place of adversarial disciplinary meetings, Frankly gives administrators and teachers structured conference guides that bring parents in as partners in building positive behavior plans.

Title funding alignment:

• Title I set-aside and capacity building: Title I funds explicitly allow investment in evidence-based parent training and professional development aimed at improving student discipline and academic engagement.
• Title III family engagement: Culturally responsive, bilingual behavior tools qualify as supplemental educational support for multilingual households.

Strategic alignment matrix for district and campus plans

Getting the most from your annual Title allocations

Spending Title funds well is about more than clearing a budget line. It means choosing tools that scale and produce measurable improvements in school culture. By using Title I and Title III funds for Frankly, district leaders accomplish three goals at once:

• Meet federal compliance: Satisfy Section 1116 and Section 3115 family engagement requirements with full documentation and audit-ready metrics.
• Support campus leaders: Give principals ready-to-use tools that target their main CIP goals around attendance and discipline.
• Support multilingual and at-risk families: Offer accessible, non-punitive support that builds lasting confidence and stronger home-school bonds.