On the chilly morning of Nov.14, 2019, Ted Carlin, a retired educator, a long-time Lions Club member from the Crooked River Ranch Lions Club and a School Vision Screener with the Oregon Lions Sight & Hearing Foundation (OLSHF), arrived at the Sherman County schools in Moro, Oregon to supervise vision screening for all of the students in the district. He was met by Lion Patricia Gabriel of the Sherman County Lions Club to help screen all of those students.
Gabriel noted how important high-quality vision screening is for students: 80 percent of learning is visual, yet about 25 percent of students have vision issues. OLSHF consistently finds about 11 percent of students in need of comprehensive vision exams and vision aids like eyeglasses.
Carlin and Gabriel, with school helpers, screened 259 students, referring 27 for comprehensive vision exams. They did all this in less than 2 hours that chilly November morning. The vision screenings provided by the Oregon Lions Sight & Hearing Foundation throughout the state are of high quality, efficient and equitable. Every student gets screened. Vision screening staff from OLSHF bring the Welch Allyn Spot vision screening tool that takes 13 measures of the eyes, looking for eight conditions common to students including myopia, hyperopia, astigmatism and more, in only seconds. OLSHF School Vision Screening is so efficient that, even with the interrupted 2019-2020 school year, OLSHF screened 181,000 students.
Colt Gill, the director of the Oregon Department of Education, is a strong proponent of Lions School Vision Screening.
Gill said, “What I noticed when I got to see the results for certain students was I know some are going to be heading to the eye doctor and that’s going to set them on the path to learning and being successful in school.”
Secure and encrypted reports are collated and returned to the school districts along with resources for student’s families.
Commented