You’ve done the research.
You’ve read the success stories.
You know the data.
You can see, clearly and completely, how this technology would transform your students’ lives – and yet the budget door slams shut.
Every educator who has ever believed deeply in a new technology or program knows the disappointing feeling of hearing “no” from an administrator.
For PE teachers, health specialists, school counselors, and other educators that prioritize modern wellness programs across the country, that new edtech is often IHT’s Spirit System. And these educators didn’t take “no” as the final answer.
This blog post is for every educator who is fighting – or has ever fought – to bring meaningful wellness technology into their school.
We’ve gathered four extraordinary stories of teachers and administrators who were turned down, pushed back, tried again, and eventually won. Along the way, we’ll share the most actionable funding strategies for edtech that you can start using today, because your students deserve a modern wellness program, and you deserve the tools to give it to them.
Why Getting Approval for School Wellness Technology Is So Challenging
Before we get to the success stories, it helps to understand why this fight is so common. Educators pursuing funding for technology in schools face a predictable set of obstacles:
- Tight and inflexible budgets, especially in underfunded districts
- Decision-makers who don’t yet see PE and wellness as data-driven disciplines
- Lack of awareness about available grants and federal funding programs
- Difficulty demonstrating ROI when the payoff is student health, not standardized test scores
- New technology requests being categorized as “extras” rather than essentials
Heart rate monitor technology for schools, like the Spirit System, isn’t a luxury. It’s an objective tool for improving and tracking physical activity, academic readiness, and emotional regulation. But getting administrators and school boards to see it that way requires persistence, data, and smart funding strategies for edtech.
The four educators below figured that out. Here’s how they persevered and what you can learn from them.
Intrinsic Charter High School, Chicago: A Six-Year Crusade That Changed a School
The Challenge
Before Orlandus Thomas joined Intrinsic Charter High School in Chicago as athletics director and physical education teacher, he had a vision. While working out wearing his own chest heart rate monitor, he had an epiphany: “There has to be something like this for kids.”
He started researching heart rate monitors for schools, found IHT, and called IHT CEO Jen Ohlson directly. His message was simple: He didn’t know how he’d do it, but he was going to get those monitors for his students.
Thomas had been on a six-year quest for edtech to help students get into their target heart rate zones. The previous school he worked at didn’t approve of purchasing heart rate monitor technology, so he carried the vision with him to Intrinsic Charter High School and was more than determined to make his vision reality.
How He Persevered
Thomas’s path to getting IHT heart rate monitors into students’ hands wasn’t without its obstacles, but he refused to give up. When leadership balked at the cost, he offered to prove the value himself.
“When they initially saw the price, they saw it was a lot,” Thomas said. “I get it. I offered to test it and show them the data.”
He launched a pilot program with just 10 monitors to be used during a virtual PE class. The data flowed directly into IHT’s assessment software, so Thomas was able to track and analyze students’ performance and students received detailed post-workout emails showing their heart rate graphs, time spent in each zone, and whether they’d met their moderate-to-vigorous activity goals. The results were undeniable.
“We tested it with those monitors and I showed [my leadership team] the data and that’s when they went all-in with me,” Thomas said. “These kids, even remotely, did the workouts I sent them and stayed in the [target heart rate] zones.”
School leadership approved the purchase of 100 IHT heart rate monitors. Within just three weeks of launching the full program, Thomas was already seeing the transformation he had spent six years working toward.
The Results
The impact was immediate and undeniable. More than half of Thomas’s students improved their fitness test scores during their first year using the student heart rate monitor technology. Students developed a sense of urgency and purpose in PE class that had never existed before.
“The heart rate monitors gave students a sense of urgency, a sense of purpose,” Thomas said. “All I do now is give them a goal, and the class is student-led, allowing them to critically think. They are focused on their effort. They are improving their health.”
Thomas’s story is a journey of six years of determination that paid off quickly – within a single school year, more than half of his 125 students were already showing measurable fitness gains. His persistence in bringing the right edtech into his classroom transformed his students’ mindsets and the school’s PE program.
“It’s just everything that I could have imagined and asked for to create the perfect fusion between technology and wellness and the accountability piece for kids to own their wellness journey.”
– Orlandus Thomas, Intrinsic Charter High School PE Teacher & Athletic Director, Chicago
His Tips For Other Educators:
- If you want to get kids invested in PE, use heart rate monitor technology.
- Don’t wait for the approval of a full-blown program. Build your case to create a pilot so that you can gather data and analyze the effectiveness of the technology.
- Find a moment of opportunity, like a remote learning period or a new school year.
- Connect the monitors to your school’s specific wellness or academic goals, such as fitness test scores or increasing MVPA.
- Never give up. Even if one school consistently says no, try again at the next school that employs you. The results will be worth it.
Irving Independent School District, Texas: Learning the Language of Funding
The Challenge
Sandi Cravens, Health and Physical Education Coordinator for Irving Independent School District in Texas, had a big goal: bring heart rate monitor technology to all eight of the district’s middle schools and showcase the correlation between improved fitness and improved academic performance.
The challenge wasn’t the vision – it was finding the money to fund it.
Cravens was aware of Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)’s Title IV funding, which designates money specifically for student support and academic enrichment, but she assumed that money wasn’t going to her department. Years of operating under No Child Left Behind had conditioned some physical educators to believe they simply weren’t eligible for new program funding, and Cravens was no exception.
Luckily, her supervisor, Irving ISD Division Director of Student Services Dr. Lance Campbell, learned that a significant portion of the district’s Title IV funds had gone unallocated. Recognizing the opportunity, Campbell went straight to Cravens about developing a PE program that could utilize the unallocated funding.
Cravens met with Irving ISD’s director of federal funding about her plan to use IHT’s heart rate monitors for PE, but her plan was initially turned down.
How She Persevered
Irving ISD’s director of federal funding told Cravens that her request for funding was denied because her proposal called for expanding a current program instead of launching an entirely new one.
“He laid it all out for me,” Cravens said. “The program has to impact academic achievement. It has to be a new program. There has to be equity across the district.”
Cravens researched our heart rate monitors and assessment software, created a data sheet, and met with him a second time. Her plan included implementing the technology at each of the district’s eight middle schools and using the data to demonstrate the correlation between improved fitness and increased academic performance. The research proved time well-spent.
“I focused on the link to academic development, how each element of the program could be measured and show the impact on academic performance,” she said. “Five minutes into the meeting, he stopped me and approved the program.”
Irving ISD purchased class sets of IHT’s heart rate monitors for each of the district’s middle schools’ PE classes.
Like many educators pursuing classroom grants for teachers and coordinators, Cravens initially didn’t know where to look or how to speak the language that funding decision-makers needed to hear. Without the right framing, even the best programs get turned down. Learning the specific language and requirements of federal education grants was her turning point.
The Results
Persistence plus the right framing equals results when pursuing funding for technology in schools.
Irving ISD’s middle schools use IHT’s student heart rate monitors as part of their PE curriculum, giving students access to a real-time student health tracking system that documents effort, tracks fitness progress, and creates a data-driven bridge between physical activity and academic readiness.
Cravens’s experience proved that the funding was always available – it just needed to be unlocked with the right language and framing.
“Health is the key foundation for what you will do in the rest of your life,” she said. “We just need to measure how a positive impact on a student’s health impacts the rest of the world at school: academics, attendance, etc.”
– Sandi Cravens, Irving Independent School District Health and Physical Education Coordinator, Texas
Her Tips for Other Educators:
- Reach out to your district’s federal funding coordinator. They may already know about grants you haven’t heard of.
- Talk to your school’s decision makers, let them know you have ideas for how to spend available funds, and talk to them about programs that can impact the students.
- Learn the specific language of what ESSA Title IV requires and how your proposed program qualifies, so you can respond quickly and authoritatively.
- Build proposal templates so you can quickly adapt and resubmit when new funding opportunities arise. (We have a funding proposal template and other funding resources you can download.)
Lewiston High School, Idaho: Grant Writing as a Team Sport
The Challenge
A brand new high school was being built in Lewiston, Idaho, and the school’s Health & Physical Education Department Chair, Chris Meyer, wanted a renewed, data-driven physical education program using edtech.
“We had a really solid PE program, we felt, but we wanted to take it to the next level,” Meyer said.
The PE team decided to implement the Comprehensive School Physical Activity Program (CSPAP) model, along with fitness technology, into the new PE program to increase opportunities for student fitness, as well as improve staff, family, and community involvement. Among the technologies the team was interested in were heart rate monitors.
When 2012 National Middle School PE Teacher of the Year Jessica Shawley joined the PE team, Shawley informed them about her previous experience using IHT heart rate monitors for PE, as well as grant writing experience. After careful consideration, they decided IHT’s heart rate monitors were the preferred edtech purchase.
The problem? The construction bond that was used to build the new school only covered construction and school basics – not the technology or fitness equipment that would take the new PE program to the next level. So Meyer and Shawley worked together to apply for grants that can supply funding for technology in schools.
How They Persevered
Meyer and Shawley treated grant writing as a team effort. Together, they researched available grants, wrote compelling applications, and submitted to multiple sources. The result was a cascade of wins.
“We wrote a lot of grants,” Meyer said. “We were very fortunate to receive several of them and that’s what allowed us to purchase the heart rate monitors along with fitness curriculum and fitness equipment.”
Their two largest awards came from the Lewis & Clark Valley Healthcare Foundation and the Idaho Office of Drug Policy Substance Abuse Block Grant, which made it possible for the school to purchase the IHT heart rate monitors and create their CrossFit-style fitness gym, establishing before- and after-school programs and expanding community partnerships.
The Results
Students at the new Lewiston High School campus now have access to a cutting-edge, heart rate monitor-powered PE program that includes elite fitness classes, dance-yoga, and CrossFit-style training. The use of heart rate monitor technology in PE gives students personalized, real-time data on every workout, turning PE from a period of general activity into a science-based wellness curriculum.
“We really do feel like we have a model physical education program or are certainly building one in the state of Idaho,” Meyer said.
The program grew to include family newsletters, community fitness partners, and after-school programming. All of it was built on the foundation of grants that Meyer and Shawley refused to stop pursuing.
“The heart rate monitors add accountability. I love that they can see the goal. It’s a great tool to talk to them about their workout.”
– Chris Meyer, Lewiston High School PE Teacher, Idaho
Their Tips for Other Educators:
- Partner with a colleague, especially if you work with someone who has experience writing grants. The process is more effective and less exhausting as a shared effort.
- Submit as many grant applications as possible. The more, the better.
- Look beyond the school district: healthcare foundations, local nonprofits, and state agencies are often overlooked grant sources.
- Use the grants you win to demonstrate results, then use those results to win more.
Pomona Unified School District, California: From “No” to a 25% MVPA Increase
The Challenge
Michelle Baumgartner, Physical Education Specialist at Pomona Unified School District in California, believed that IHT’s heart rate monitor technology would be transformational for her district’s students. She made the case to the school board – but was told no.
“I thought that [IHT’s heart rate monitors] would be a great tool for our teachers to use, for our students, and to motivate our students to meet the fitness goals for physical education, and also help with meeting their standards in physical education in California,” Baumgartner said.
But the district wasn’t ready to commit. So Baumgartner changed her approach.
How She Persevered
Rather than asking for a large rollout, Baumgartner came back with a smaller, smarter proposal: “Why can’t we pilot it at six schools to start with?”
She knew her district was data-driven, so she framed the request around data collection and program evaluation – language that the school board understood and valued.
She also did her homework on available funding. COVID-19 relief funds were available to the district at the time, so Baumgartner made the case that PE technology qualified as a legitimate use of those dollars.
“I asked, if we have this money, why can’t we use it for PE?” Baumgartner said. “Because technology is very hard to find for PE.”
The combination of a limited pilot proposal and an unused funding source got the school board to say yes.
The Results
What started as a six-school pilot with IHT heart rate monitors expanded to all 24 elementary schools in Pomona Unified, reaching approximately 3,800 students. The results were extraordinary.
Before using IHT’s heart rate monitors, Pomona’s PE classes averaged 44.8% of class time in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA), 10.4% below the CDC’s recommendation of 50%.
After implementing the student heart rate monitors, classes experienced nearly a 25% increase in MVPA, surpassing the CDC recommendation by 11.2%. In the very first month of use, students exceeded the CDC’s MVPA recommendation by a remarkable 16.2%.
The success was so significant that the district expanded the program to middle school and high school PE classes for the following school year.
“It promoted physical education at the schools. IHT is beneficial for any school district. It will definitely give your students motivation to do better in PE but also to reach their own personal fitness goals.”
– Michelle Baumgartner, Pomona Unified School District Physical Education Specialist, California
Her Tips for Other Educators:
- If the full program gets declined, reframe it as a limited pilot focused on a data collection trial. Don’t give up.
- Research all available funding, including grants your school or district already has won, Title funds, and state wellness grants are often underutilized.
- Use your district’s own language: if they are data-driven, make your proposal about data.
- Let the results do the talking. A successful pilot makes the next request much easier.
- Work with teachers who are sceptical about new edtech to ensure they’re thoroughly trained and supported.
How Do Schools Get Funding for Technology?
If these stories have one common thread, it’s this: Funding for technology in schools is available, but you have to know where to look and how to ask. Here is a comprehensive guide to the most reliable funding strategies for edtech that educators across the country have used successfully:
1. District Budget Allocations
Technology funds may be embedded in annual district budgets. Timing matters: Submit proposals during planning cycles.
2. Federal and State Grants
Explore:
- ESSA-related funding
- Title I and Title IV funds
- State wellness initiatives
3. National Grants for Educators
Many national organizations offer targeted grants for educators focused on health, physical fitness, STEM, and innovation.
4. Local Classroom Grants for Teachers
Local foundations and education associations frequently provide smaller classroom grants for teachers that can fund pilot programs.
5. PTO and Community Partnerships
Parent organizations often support wellness-focused initiatives, especially when data demonstrates student benefit.
6. Phased Implementation
Propose:
- A pilot program
- Data collection period
- Scaled expansion
7. Vendor Support
Some vendors offer support with identifying and applying to grants. We’re happy to offer this type of support to people and schools interested in the Spirit System. We have compiled a dedicated funding and grant resource library for educators looking to purchase heart rate monitors for schools.
8. Align With Strategic Plans
Tie your proposal to:
- District strategic goals
- Student wellness metrics
- Emotional wellness initiatives
- Academic performance data
When considering funding for technology in schools, the key is to combine financial pathways with strategic alignment.
The Bigger Picture: Why These Funding Strategies for EdTech Matter
Heart rate monitor technology isn’t a gadget. It’s a gateway to student self-awareness, physical health, and even emotional regulation. When students wear our Spirit monitors in PE, they’re not just exercising, they’re learning to understand their own bodies. They’re seeing, in real time, when they’re working hard and when they need to push more. They’re building the habits that lead to lifelong health.
For schools that have implemented a student health tracking system like the Spirit System, the results speak for themselves: higher MVPA rates, improved fitness scores, greater student participation, improved self-regulation, and teachers who feel empowered to make data-driven decisions about their programs.
Heart rate monitor technology for PE is one of the most evidence-backed investments a school can make. And the good news – as our success stories mentioned in this blog post all prove – is that the funding is out there.
Persistence, strategy, and clarity is what can help turn your vision into reality.
The most successful educators don’t wait for someone to hand them the resources they need. They research, they write grants, they build coalitions, they pilot programs, and they let the data make their case. They use every available funding strategy for edtech at their disposal, and they don’t stop when they’re turned down.
Why Heart Rate Monitor Technology Strengthens Wellness Programs
For schools focused on measurable outcomes, student heart rate monitors provide:
- Objective effort tracking
- Data-informed instruction
- Support for differentiated learning
- Reduced comparison-based competition
- Clear accountability
Heart rate monitors for PE shift the focus from who is fastest to who is improving. The data supports conversations around self-regulation, goal setting, and physical literacy. Simply put, these outcomes make it easier to justify funding strategies for edtech that prioritize wellness.
Lessons From Educators Who Refused to Give Up
Across these stories, clear patterns emerge.
- Reframe the Narrative: Don’t present heart rate monitor technology as equipment. Present it as instructional infrastructure that helps students, teachers, and the school.
- Lead With Outcomes: Student engagement, measurable effort, equity, and data-driven grading resonate with administrators.
- Start Small If Necessary: A small pilot is easier to afford and when proven successful, can become district-wide implementation.
- Team Up With Peers: Working with your co-workers to apply for grants or meet with administrators make the process less stressful and increase chances of success.
- Be Persistent: Initial rejection is common. Many successful implementations began with a “no.”
Persistence Is Your Best Strategy
If your proposal for heart rate monitors for schools has been denied, consider:
- Did you align with district priorities?
- Did you provide measurable ROI?
- Did you explore a wide variety of grants available to your school?
- Did you propose a pilot instead of a full rollout?
- Did you follow up consistently?
Effective funding strategies for edtech combine vision with evidence.
Ready to Bring Heart Rate Monitors to Your School?
Wellness technology is no longer optional. Schools are increasingly focused on edtech that supports whole-child education, emotional wellness integration, and measurable engagement. A thoughtful proposal for heart rate monitor technology can support all three.
The path may not be immediate. But perseverance paired with strategy can transform rejection into opportunity.
If you are ready to advocate for a stronger wellness program in your school or district and need support building your case, learn more about how heart rate monitors for schools can align with your district’s goals and help you create measurable, meaningful impact by reading more of our success stories on our blog or reaching out to us for more information. Our team is ready to support you and help you identify funding opportunities.
Your students deserve a wellness program that meets them where they are – and helps them become the healthiest version of themselves. But sometimes the difference between “no” and “yes” is simply not giving up.
