In her search for funding to add heart rate monitors to all eight of the Irving Independent School District’s middle schools, Sandi Cravens learned a valuable lesson: requests never made are rarely granted.
In January, Cravens, Irving ISD’s Health and Physical Education Coordinator, received $35,000 from the district’s Every Student Succeeds Act’s Title IV-A funding allocation to purchase sets of adidas Zone for IHT Spirit wrist heart rate monitors to be used across her district. If not for some quick thinking by a new administrator, Cravens might not have even made the request for ESSA funding.
“I was familiar already with Title IV but I didn’t pay too much attention to it because I assumed the money would go to another group of people in our district because that’s usually how it works,” she said.
That feeling dates back to the reality of the No Child Left Behind Act, where schools focused primarily on the core subjects of math, English, science and social studies, leaving little time and even fewer funds available for electives such as art, music and physical education. Read More
