Live Workshops and Keynotes
- 60 to 90 minute sessions, half day, or full day
- Delivered on site or live online
- For single schools, districts, county offices, SELPAs, ROEs, BOCES and state agencies
AN MTSS FRAMEWORK FOR SCHOOLS AND DISTRICTS
Your students can come back to school, and stay in your district.
Every adult in your building working from the same approach, so what happens next doesn't depend on which staff member a student runs into.
9 in 10 districts we trained kept at least one student in district rather than placing them outside it. One out-of-district placement costs a district $25,000 to $130,000 a year.
2026 School Avoidance Impact and Benchmarking Survey
What the Framework includes
- 1. The Framework Curriculum
- 2. Quick Start Implementation Guide
- 3. Teacher Cheat Sheet
- 4. Parent Master Class
All four included in every license.
Building-Wide License
- Licensed per school building, and one license covers every adult in that building
- Use it as self guided learning or work through it together in team meetings
- Complete the full courses or pull short lessons for a staff meeting
- Includes the Framework Curriculum, Quick Start Implementation Guide, Teacher Cheat Sheet and Parent Master Class
Trusted nationwide
Districts and schools working with our school avoidance specialists
Why a shared framework
Give the people supporting your students a clearer next step.
A student’s difficulty attending school can involve several staff members and the family. The Framework gives your team a common starting point for understanding barriers, discussing responsibilities and planning a coordinated response.
Understand the barriers
Explore school avoidance and the questions that can help your team better understand a student’s situation.
Strengthen school-home conversations
Bring family perspectives and practical communication guidance into the way your team works with families.
Coordinate next steps
Use the Framework and resources to support conversations about roles, responsibilities and implementation.
Once your building is working from the same framework, the change looks small from the outside. A teacher knows what to say when a student says they can't come in today. A counselor isn't carrying the case alone. A parent gets a call that isn't about consequences. The student notices that every adult is saying the same thing.
That consistency is what moves these students. Not any single conversation.
Who it brings together
- Special Education Directors
- RTI Team Members
- Special Education Teachers
- Social Workers
- School Nurses
- General Education Teachers
- School Psychologists
- Attendance Staff
- School Engagement Staff
- School Counselors
- Principals
- Student Assistance Counselors
- Pupil Personnel Workers
- Truancy Officers
- MTSS Staff
What you receive
Expert-led learning, and a clear plan for putting it into practice.
The Framework Curriculum
Expert-led lessons your team can return to as it puts the Framework into practice.
What the curriculum covers
- Understanding school avoidance and early signs
- Learning from student and parent perspectives
- Understanding the functions of school refusal
- Exploring approaches discussed by specialists
- Clarifying school and family roles
- Considering educational supports and responsibilities
- Planning a return to school
- Reviewing school practices and prevention
Quick Start Implementation Guide
Step-by-step guidance to put the Framework into practice.
Teacher resources and family access
Included with every license: the Teacher Cheat Sheet and Parent Master Class access for families.
Start with the driver
What school avoidance actually is
School avoidance, sometimes called school refusal, is when a student struggles to attend school due to underlying challenges, which can include mental health, learning issues, undiagnosed learning differences, and school-related factors. Often, multiple factors are at play at once. It is one of the most misunderstood challenges facing schools today. It shows up in your data as chronic absenteeism, but the absence itself is not the problem. It's a signal that something deeper is going on for that student.
Compliance-first responses like letters, point systems, and truancy court tend to make attendance worse for the students most likely to respond to real support. Improving outcomes, and your attendance numbers, requires schools to move past generic attendance policy and use best practice, evidence-based strategies built specifically for school avoidance.
The family-informed difference
Unmatched Insight: The Family Reality
We are the only resource that brings you the family perspective, and that insight is critical. For over a decade, we've talked directly with both schools and families, and we know how parents perceive and respond to school communications, what builds trust, and what shuts it down.
Family-informed learning is part of every license. Real accounts from children who have experienced school avoidance sit alongside their parents' experiences, paired with professional guidance on school-home collaboration and planning a return to school. Your team sees both the barriers to attendance and what families actually need to move past them.
This is difficult to understand from the outside. It's hard to grasp what these families are going through unless you hear it directly from them, or live it yourself. Once your team speaks the family's language and understands what they're feeling and what actually helps, it opens the door to honest, open communication with families, a needed part of any intervention and necessary to improve attendance. It builds the kind of school-family collaboration that is otherwise hard to achieve.
Every license includes Parent Master Class access for families.
Results
What changed in two districts.
District results, First cohort
A K-12 district in New Jersey
- Staff confidence, 5-point scale
- 2 → 5
- Staff confidence, 5-point scale
- Students back in the building
- 10+
- Students back in the building
- Protocols adopted district-wide
- 7 of 8
- Protocols adopted district-wide
- Secured an external university grant to fund a third year of coaching
- Built check-in/check-out systems and mentoring for at-risk students
- Embedded CBT- and DBT-informed strategies in reintegration planning
“Every attendance improvement we’ve seen is a direct result of this training.”
District-wide initiative
A public school district in Washington State
7 schools60 educator licensesDistrict-wide
- Moved from legal letters and crisis firefighting to a unified, evidence-based response
- Staff learned to recognize anxiety-driven absence instead of defiance, shifting from punitive enforcement to clinical partnership
- Multiple students returned to regular attendance, including long-term school refusal cases
- Reduced out-of-district placement referrals, avoiding $25K to $130K per student in placement costs
BREAKTHROUGH: 3-YEAR RE-ENTRY CASE
One of three siblings who had exhausted every available option, a student who had not attended in-person school since 5th grade, now attends 4 to 5 days per week, supported by a modified attendance day paired with structured exposure therapy.
Now a repeat customer with an ongoing district-wide partnership.
These results reflect two districts’ reported experience working with School Avoidance Alliance’s school avoidance specialists; they are not an evaluation of the Framework. Outcomes vary by setting and implementation.
What this looks like in your building
Right now the people in your building are working from different ideas about what is happening. None of it is for lack of caring. A counselor reads it as manipulation. The front office makes a late arrival feel like trouble without meaning to. A teacher keeps sending work home that the student cannot touch yet. And the assistant principal, whose job is attendance, uses the language of consequences, because that is the job. Your social worker can be doing everything right and have it undone by the next conversation that family has with the school.
That is the first thing that changes once your building is working from the same framework, and it is mostly a reframe rather than a new skill set. Once everyone understands what they are actually looking at, the responses stop contradicting each other. People are more patient because they see it differently, not because they were told to be. It becomes clear who leads with the family, and which adult the student is building trust with. Over the following months that turns into how your building handles this, instead of four people each doing their best on their own.
Pricing
Framework Pricing
The framework is licensed per building, so every adult in your building is working from the same approach.
For one building
Single School License
One license per school building. Covers every adult in the building: teachers, front office, nurse, attendance staff, counselors and social workers. Includes teacher tools and family resources.
- Access for every adult in the building
- Framework Curriculum
- Quick Start Implementation Guide
- Teacher Cheat Sheet
- Parent Master Class
- Instant pricing for elementary, middle and high schools
Pricing is based on your building, and we can right size it for smaller schools.
More than one building? See District Licensing.
Talk to a human (15 min call, no pressure)Discounted for multiple schools
For multiple schools
District Licensing
For districts licensing multiple schools, we provide a custom quote based on the number of buildings. Every building uses the same approach, with full staff access across your district.
- Access for every adult in every building
- Framework Curriculum
- Quick Start Implementation Guide
- Teacher Cheat Sheet
- Parent Master Class
- Districtwide consistency
- Multi-school discount
Custom quote within 1 business day
Talk to a human (15 min call, no pressure)Not a school? See licensing for clinical and community teams.
What doing nothing costs a district
$25,000 to $130,000
What a district pays for one out-of-district placement, per student, per year
9 in 10
Schools reported at least one student maintained in district rather than placed outside it
7 in 10
Reported three or more
Keep one student out of one placement and this license has paid for itself several times over.
2026 School Avoidance Impact and Benchmarking Survey
Reported by a district using the Framework: a student who had not attended school in person for three years now attends 4 to 5 days a week.
Funding
Most districts already have a budget line for this.
Many districts use Title I and Title II funds for professional development like this. Title IV, Part A is frequently overlooked for attendance work specifically, but it directly supports the family engagement and school climate side of it. McKinney-Vento funds can also apply, since annual staff training is a required part of that program.
If you want help identifying which fund fits your situation, bring it up on a call.
Talk through the right fit for your school or district.
Use a 15-minute overview call to discuss staff coverage, participating schools and implementation questions. Invite your administrator if that would help.
Expertise
Professional expertise. Family-informed perspective.
Meet the school avoidance specialists behind the Framework.
The only national organization focused exclusively on school avoidance.
Jayne Demsky
Author & Founder, School Avoidance Alliance
Jayne is a national authority on chronic absenteeism and the author of Overcoming School Avoidance. After identifying critical gaps in school resources during a personal family struggle, she founded the Alliance in 2014 to build systemic, evidence-based solutions for districts and families.
Read full bio for Jayne Demsky
Jayne is a founding member of Attendance USA, delivering professional development frameworks for school leadership nationwide. Her flagship district platform and parent masterclasses serve as premier national resources. Her work has been featured in USA Today, The Washington Post, Education Week, and CBS News.
Dr. Anne Marie Albano
Professor of Medical Psychology in Psychiatry; Co-author of the SRAS-R
Dr. Albano is a Professor of Medical Psychology in Psychiatry and board-certified in clinical child and adolescent psychology. She is the founder and director of a leading clinic for anxiety and related disorders in New York City.
Read full bio for Dr. Anne Marie Albano
Dr. Albano has co-authored over 200 articles and chapters, conducts clinical research, supervises the research and clinical development of interns and postdoctoral fellows in psychology and psychiatry, and is involved in the advanced training of senior clinicians in CBT. One of her most well-known works is co-authoring "You and Your Anxious Child: Free Your Child from Fears and Worries and Create a Joyful Family Life" with Leslie Pepper.
She has been awarded the "Outstanding Contribution by an Individual for Clinical Activities" distinction by the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies.
Dr. Dina Nunziato
Clinical Director, Anxiety & School Avoidance Treatment Program
Dr. Dina Nunziato is a clinical director of an anxiety treatment program in Greenwich, Connecticut, providing partial treatment programs and customizable outpatient services for children and adolescents with anxiety disorders and school avoidance.
Read full bio for Dr. Dina Nunziato
Dr. Nunziato has helped young adults in anxiety-related clinical and educational settings for twenty years. She specializes in Cognitive-behavioral treatment of anxiety and related disorders. Her research and publications include evidence-based mindfulness techniques to support anxiety management, academic success, and emotional well-being.
Most recently, Dr. Nunziato completed a doctoral dissertation entitled Embodied Learning Communities of Practice in Addressing College Student Anxiety.
Krystina Dawson
School Psychologist & Founder, Center for One Consulting
Krystina Dawson, M.S.Ed., is a certified school psychologist and special education administrator in Greenwich, Connecticut. She is experienced and dedicated to leading teams and building plans to reintegrate kids with school avoidance back into school.
Read full bio for Krystina Dawson
She is an adjunct professor at Iona College, teaching graduate classes for mental health students and future school psychologists. Such as: "Consultation and Collaboration in Schools," "Social Psychology," "Psychological Aspects of Sexual Health," "Contemporary Issues in School Psychology," and "Exceptional Individuals."
Krystina is the founder of a private consulting agency, Center for One, which supports families and unique learners through the special education process.
Getting started
From choosing your scope to bringing your team together.
Step 1: Choose your license
Compare the Single School License and District Licensing.
Step 2: Request pricing and a proposal
Request pricing and a proposal for your school.
Step 3: Get your team started
After payment or an accepted purchase order under agreed terms, we’ll coordinate staff access with your designated contact. The Quick Start Implementation Guide walks your team through the first steps.
Planning around a new term or a staff-development day? Talk through your rollout timing with us.
FAQs
Questions school teams ask
What does every license include?
Every license includes unlimited staff access, the Framework Curriculum, the Quick Start Implementation Guide, the Teacher Cheat Sheet and Parent Master Class access for families. Districts can contact us for District Licensing.
Which schools does the Single School License cover?
Any single school building, including elementary, middle and high schools, K-8, K-12 and 6-12 schools, and alternative or therapeutic programs. One license covers every adult in the building. Elementary, middle and high schools get instant pricing. For other buildings we price individually and reply within one business day.
How does District Licensing work?
Districts receive discounted pricing when licensing multiple schools. Every district license includes full access for all relevant staff, MTSS-aligned training, implementation tools, and districtwide consistency. Contact us for a district quote.
Can this be paid for with grant or federal funding?
Yes. Many districts use Title I and Title II funds for this kind of professional development. Title IV, Part A is often overlooked for attendance work specifically, but it directly supports family engagement and school climate initiatives like this one. McKinney-Vento funds, typically associated with homeless student services, can also be applied for, since annual staff training is a required part of that program.
Is live training included?
Live workshops are not included in the standard licenses. They are available as optional add-ons; book a call to discuss them.
How do I get pricing?
Use Request Instant Quote under Single School License to receive pricing and a proposal for your school. For multiple schools, use Request District Quote under District Licensing.
Do I need to take the survey or book a call to buy?
Both are optional. You can request a Single School License quote directly, or request a district quote for multiple schools.
Does the license include ongoing consulting?
Ongoing consulting is not included in the standard licenses. Ask about additional needs before purchasing.
How long does a license last?
Licenses are annual. Review the purchasing terms for your license before completing your order.
Give your team a shared starting point.
We built the Framework, the system districts use to respond to school avoidance. Choose the coverage your school or district needs and bring its curriculum, practical resources and family-informed guidance to your team.