“Kalani said he was really interested in this and I thought it sounded like a really good program for us,” Baumgartner recalled.
Working alongside representatives from IHT, Baumgartner developed an initial plan to purchase enough monitors to pilot them at 8 of her campuses. That plan grew, though, after Baumgartner began working with her director, who also saw how the monitors would benefit both students and teachers alike.
“When I first presented to the district, I thought let’s pilot in 8 schools because that would be less expensive,” Baumgartner said. “But then my director really liked the idea and she said let’s double it. We got a quote for that and my director was okay with that too.
"Then she said, ‘I’m thinking big now. Why can’t we just have it for all 24 sites?’”
Before the 2023-24 school year ended, Baumgartner learned that district officials had committed to spending a portion of the $81.5 million it received from the U.S. Department of Education as part of the American Rescue Plan (ARP)’s Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Fund on her proposal. Baumgartner is excited to get the monitors distributed to her campuses so students can start to benefit.
With the heart rate monitors, students will be able to benefit from:
- Seeing their heart rate – and heart rate zone designated by color – in real time as they exercise
- Achieving a session goal for minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity that is specific to their fitness level and physiology
- A detailed post-session report that includes a graph of their heart rate throughout the session that can be used to connect data to feeling
“We are really excited this is coming because we want our students to be motivated,” she said. “We want them to be participating and be able to get instant feedback on how they’re doing and have the teachers start setting goals for them.”
Requesting Her District’s ESSER Funding
Like all local school districts across the country, Pomona USD needs to allocate its ESSER III funding prior to the Sept. 30, 2024 deadline. Any ESSER III funding unallocated by Sept. 30 or unspent by Jan. 28, 2025 must be returned to the federal government.
That schools can spend ESSER money on technology caught both Baumgartner and Hobayan’s attention as they looked at purchasing IHT ZONE monitors.
“Everything kind of fit hand-in-hand,” Hobayan said. “We had technology that we could use for PE if we had this money, so we wanted to invest in it.”
Once Baumgartner and her supervisor started building proposals, they made sure they had all the information officials might ask for, ranging from start-up costs to data privacy. When they finally decided how many sets of IHT ZONE heart rate monitors to request, they presented to the school district’s cabinet, which serves as a review board prior to any funding request moving to the school board level.
The final request included one set of 35 IHT ZONE heart rate monitors for each elementary campus along with charging cases, software and NFC readers to start and stop the monitors. Because one set of monitors can be used in multiple classes, schools are able to reach 100% of their students without buying individual monitors for each.
“It was a lengthy process,” Baumgartner said. “They want to know how the monitors are going to be used. They want to know how the students are going to benefit. And because it’s technology, the big thing was how the data was going to be used. Who was going to be able to see it?
“They had a lot of questions about that in the beginning that I had to get cleared up,” Baumgartner continued. “That included a long legal review. Once we made it through that review, then I think everyone was on board with it.”
Rightly concerned with protecting student data, officials made sure IHT’s privacy policy met and exceeded district requirements and approved the purchase.
Tying Back to COVID Relief and Recovery
Now three full years beyond the days when many schools switched to online learning during the height of the pandemic, a key component of requesting ESSER funding is to prove how the program will address pandemic-related learning loss. For Baumgartner and Hobayan, the need to continue to move students beyond the pandemic’s impact remains front and center.
“We had studies that showed that as many as 87% of students were not getting any movement (in their daily lives) at all,” she said. “How were we going to make our program better so that these students will be moving again?”
“We knew where the learning loss was,” Hobayan said. “We knew that we could potentially use this (technology) as a tool that could not only enhance learning but, more importantly, we could share it to school communities. We needed to get parents on board in terms of moderate to vigorous physical activity and that was the biggest thing I was stressing. When we get kids back into physical education, we’re giving them quality moving experiences. Now, how can we further extend that? This tool gives everyone a sense of ownership.”
Stake-holders, including the student, parents, teachers and school administrators, are on the same page thanks to the heart rate data available to them. The student and parents can receive a detailed post-session report via email after each class. Teachers see the same data so they can provide feedback and guidance to help students stay on task.
Piloting with an Eye on Expansion
As they researched the IHT ZONE, Baumgartner and Hobayan met with San Bernardino CUSD PE Specialist Scott Smith, who credits the IHT ZONE as a key component of a plan that completely refocused PE in his district. Smith showed the Pomona teachers how his district uses the monitors to keep high school students focused on their health and wellness.
While Baumgartner and Hobayan remain focused on launching the program at their elementary schools, they see how older students can benefit from the monitors as well. Their long-term goal is to prove to the district leadership that their program creates engaged students who understand how MVPA benefits their long-term health.
“Physical education (in California, which has waived physical fitness testing) is based off participation now,” Hobayan said. “There is no real-life data for PE. That’s how we have approached this, and that’s where we are now.
“Hopefully the district sees that the investment is worth it and eventually we could get to the secondary and high school levels,” Hobayan continued. “It’s a good pilot program at the elementary level because we’re going to give these students a basic foundation. By the time they get to middle school and high school, think of all the data they’re going to have in terms of physical activity. If we continue to build a program and we have monitors at the (middle and high school levels), by the time these 4th graders get to high school, they’re going to have all of that data.”
Boost Student Wellness with IHT ZONE heart rate monitors:
