Dear Colleagues,

The article attached (Daily News Editorial - 4/25/04) supports the position of the VCA "Check Yearly See Clearly" program. It also supports the work of the New York Children's Coalition. Ralph Woythaler, Pres/CEO of 21st Century Optic,s is a board member of the coalition and the company heavily supports this charity. The company is also a member of the VCA. It is incumbent upon those of us in the industry to support these attempts to educate and advocate for the importance of our children's vision and its care and well being. At this time the coalition has been successful in having introduced legislation in the state for mandatory comprehensive eye exams for all children entering the school system in the kindergarten and first grade. This legislation is sponsored in the Assembly by Assemblyman Steven Sanders and in the House by Senator Charles Fuschillo. We would ask you to write your representatives in support of this bill and to support the New York Children's Vision Coalition as your charity of choice.

from the New York Daily News

City Hall sets sights on helping kids see

Of all the possible ways to assist children who are having difficulty in school, checking their eyes and fitting them with glasses should be one of the simplest to achieve. But the two city agencies charged with that responsibility let it slide for years.
The Health and Education departments have, in fact, been doing a worse job than anyone imagined. Not only do they fail to examine thousands of kids, but when they do, most of the screenings are useless because there's no followup - even for disorders that can lead to partial blindness. A letter is sent home, and that's pretty much it.

On Sunday, the Daily News called on the city to make sure all school children - especially those having trouble reading - can see clearly. The editorial produced a Health Department confession that up to 80% of the kindergartners and first-graders who flunk vision screenings never see an eye doctor. Even worse, the department admitted that fully half the kids with serious eye disorders are never examined by a physician.

Now, though, Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott and Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden promise action. They say they've been trying to address deficiencies in school eye screenings and vow to develop a more thorough program for next school year. That's at least a commitment. Now they must deliver on it.

The city needs mandatory eye exams for all children when they start school, along with followup to make sure that all who need glasses get them. The Health Department now misses one-quarter of the kindergartners and first-graders it is charged with testing.

The Education Department also must overhaul the way it examines older students. It is supposed to test kids in prekindergarten and grades 2, 3, 5, 7 and 10, but one-third are never checked. DOE also relies on volunteers to give tests such as the familiar eye chart, which is useless for diagnosing anything but nearsightedness.

When asked what percentage of city public school students wear glasses, the best DOE could do was cite the statistic that nationally 25% of kids have abnormal vision. But a walk through any city school finds far fewer than one in four kids wearing glasses. Clearly, many who need them don't have them.

Mayor Bloomberg's commitment to ending social promotion makes it imperative that kids walk into class able to focus on the blackboard and on their books. If a child can't see, a child can't read.

Kids Can't Read If They Can't See

Having ended social promotion for third-graders, Mayor Bloomberg is spending $51 million to help elementary students learn to read with special instruction and summer school, if need be. Now, he also should make sure that, physically, they can read.
All children in the city should undergo thorough vision testing when they're first enrolled in school - to be enforced as aggressively as the requirement for immunizations - and be subjected to periodic rigorous screening through high school. That will mean overhauling the hit-and-miss way the Health and Education departments conduct eye tests.

Neither requires students to have the most sophisticated exams. Both fail to test thousands every year and are lax on following up on kids with vision deficiencies. As a result, medical experts say, many children struggle with classwork because they need glasses and don't know it.

In a typical city classroom, few, if any, kids wear glasses, but studies show that about one-quarter of U.S. elementary school students have vision trouble significant enough to affect performance. Dr. Andrea Thau, associate clinical professor of the SUNY College of Optometry, says they can become so fatigued trying to focus on text that they have no energy left for comprehension.

Nearsighted children have trouble seeing the blackboard, while farsighted students have difficulty with desk work. Others can't scan a line of type because their eyes don't work together; some find their eyes crossing or wandering because of weak muscles. Kids also may suffer from amblyopia, known as lazy eye, in which one eye becomes super strong while the other stops functioning.

Despite the prevalence of such eye disorders, 86% of U.S. kids do not have eye checkups by first grade, according to the Better Vision Institute. Here in the city, Health Department medical technicians are supposed to administer five tests, including checks for near and far vision, eye coordination and colorblindness, to every kindergartner and first-grader. But in 2002-03, the department failed to examine more than a quarter of the children.

The Department of Education misses even more students - about one-third - when doing required screenings in pre-kindergarten and grades 2, 3, 5, 7 and 10. It also relies on volunteers to administer tests such as the familiar eye chart, which doctors say is useless for diagnosing anything but nearsightedness.

The city's record of following up when a vision deficiency is found isn't much better. The 20% or so of kids who fail the Health Department exam get a letter home and a form for an eye doctor to mail back. But many of those forms are never returned. DOE sends letters home but makes no attempt to follow up.

What's crystal clear is that thousands of public school children aren't being tested, and even when they are, too many don't get the glasses they need.

During his campaign for City Hall, Bloomberg issued a position paper that noted the importance of school-based eye and ear testing. Now, Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden must join forces with Chancellor Joel Klein to follow through.

Frieden should start by mounting a drive for truly mandatory, full eye exams for children at the start of their school career. And he and Klein must devise a uniform, thorough system of regular exams, given by trained testers, for students as they get older.

There's no excuse for something as simple as a pair of corrective lenses to stand in the way of something as important as reading.