LockedIn’s Title I Subsidy Program: How Paying Schools Help Fund Phone-Free Access for Title I Schools

A phone-free campus shouldn’t be a privilege reserved for well-funded districts. LockedIn runs a built-in subsidy program that takes a portion of every paying school’s subscription and reinvests it into covering the cost of LockedIn for Title I schools — the schools that serve students from the lowest-income communities and that often have the least budget flexibility for new technology.

How the Title I Subsidy Program Works

Every school that pays for LockedIn is, by default, part of the program. A portion of the revenue from paying districts flows directly into a subsidy pool that offsets the cost of deploying LockedIn at qualifying Title I schools.

Why LockedIn Runs This Program

The most-cited studies point the same way: the academic and mental-health benefits of phone-free classrooms are largest for students from low socio-economic backgrounds. The London School of Economics study found that the lowest-achieving students gained 14.2% of a standard deviation after phone bans — more than double the average gain. The Norwegian School of Economics found the same pattern for girls’ GPA and mental-health outcomes.

Title I schools are exactly the schools whose students stand to benefit the most — and too often the ones with the least room in their budget for any new line item. The subsidy program closes that gap so the schools that need phone-free classrooms the most aren’t the ones that have to wait the longest to get them.

Who Qualifies

Any school or district that holds Title I, Part A status under the Every Student Succeeds Act is eligible to apply. That includes both schoolwide and targeted-assistance Title I schools. Priority is given to:

• • Schools with the highest Title I concentrations — typically 75%+ free-and-reduced-lunch eligibility
• • Schools in states with phone-free mandates but no corresponding implementation funding
• • Districts with documented academic or behavioral needs tied to classroom phone distraction

What the Subsidy Covers

The subsidy can cover some or all of the standard LockedIn deployment, including:

• • Per-student software licensing
• • Admin dashboard and compliance reporting
• • Onboarding and staff training
• • Ongoing implementation support

Because LockedIn is software-based with no hardware requirement, the subsidy goes a long way — there are no pouches to replace, no lockers to install, and no physical inventory to maintain.

How Paying Schools Are Already Helping

If your school is already on LockedIn, you’re already part of this. A portion of your subscription helps fund phone-free classrooms at a Title I school somewhere else in the country. Every new district that signs up grows the subsidy pool and makes it possible to cover more Title I schools.

This model is intentional: rather than depending on one-off donations or grants, the program scales directly with LockedIn’s paying customer base. The more schools that go phone-free through LockedIn, the more Title I schools can join them at little or no cost.

Stacking the Subsidy with Other Funding

The Title I subsidy stacks cleanly with other funding strategies. A qualifying school can use the subsidy to cover the core platform cost and still pursue Title II, Title IV-A, or state school-safety grants for training, curriculum, and SEL components. For a full overview, see our complete phone-free funding guide, which covers Title funds and braided funding.

How to Apply

If you work at a Title I school or district and want to bring LockedIn to your students through the subsidy program, fill out the Title I application. It takes about two minutes — we’ll ask for your school name, Title I status, student count, and a brief description of the phone challenges you’re trying to solve. We review applications on a rolling basis and work with each approved school to match available subsidy to their specific deployment.

A phone-free classroom shouldn’t depend on a ZIP code. This program is one of the ways we make sure it doesn’t.