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SALT LAKE CITY — A small-scale pair of '50s-inspired cat-eye glasses were the frames of choice for a little girl who before Tuesday had a hard time seeing the chalk board in her classroom.
Dressed in pink, she was one of about 100 children at Lincoln Elementary who were fitted at no charge with prescription eye wear thanks to the efforts of a nonprofit organization. An anticipated 200 more children in the Salt Lake School District will receive glasses this week.
They all immediately want to go outside and see the trees and the clouds.
–Mary VanMinde, Salt Lake School District
#vanminde_quote
"They all immediately want to go outside and see the trees and the clouds," said Mary VanMinde, who is in charge of family support and community outreach for the district.
In every elementary school in the district, half the grades are screened by school nurses annually. This year, some of the students in need of glasses were sent on to the OneSight clinic Tuesday for further examination and to receive eye wear if needed.
OneSight is an international nonprofit arm of Luxottica Retail, which is comprised of retailers such as LensCrafters, Sears optical and Target Optical. Local volunteers and doctors from those companies ran the clinic, which featured a mobile vision center where kids were screened, frames picked and lenses shaped.
The wait time for getting glasses on faces was about 20 minutes — service you'd be hard pressed to find in stores.
Joeclyn, a fourth-grader, said the world was less blurry after she got her specially-made pair.
"It's bright," she said. "It's clearer."
The schools where the clinic will make stops this week were selected based on the number of students who failed pre-screenings and the number of children from low-income families.
"Our parents are making tough choices between rent and gas and food," VanMinde said. "This is something they could never attend to."
About one in five children need vision correction and some of the kids who came through were given very strong prescriptions, VanMinde said. Poor eyesight can seriously interfere with students learning how to read. It's also tied to some attention and behavioral problems, she said.
"It's a huge benefit to the teachers because once these kids can see the board, their attention span increases. Their learning increases," she said. "It's so much easier to teach a child with focus."
The OneSight mobile clinic comes to Utah about every three years and each time it makes a difference. Eye doctors found cataracts in a 9-year-old one year, and it isn't uncommon to treat children in need of extremely high prescriptions who have never had an eye-exam before.
"These were things that were not known to the families," VanMinde said.
Leata Elisaia said she has personally witnessed dozens of kids get better vision instantly. Elisaia is a local organizer for OneSight and a general manager at Target Optical in Fort Union.
"That has made a huge, tremendous impact on their lives," she said. "Give the gift of sight — that's what we do."
Email:mfarmer@ksl.com
