Gov. Mike DeWine visited Northeastern Elementary School Monday to discuss the new OhioSee program, which brings critical vision services, including comprehensive eye exams and glasses, to kindergarten through third grade students in their school.
The program, which comes with no cost to parents and families, will be piloted in 15 high-need counties, which also includes Montgomery and Butler counties, where more than 80% of children who are identified through a vision screening as needing additional vision care do not receive it.
“These counties ... had the highest incidence of children not getting the glasses,” DeWine said. “We picked these 15 to start but what we hope to do later on is expand this to every single county in the state of Ohio so that every child in Ohio will get glasses if they need them, will get that eye exam if they need (it).”
As part of the program, a van will travel to schools on a set schedule, providing on-site vision exams. It they need glasses, they can pick out a pair and the van will come back a few weeks later for that student to be fitted and receive the glasses, DeWine said.
“It’s kind of a simple process in many, many ways but it’s something that we think is very, very important,” he said. “We want every child to be able to see the blackboard or the smartboard and be able to respond and to be in class and not have a problem that they can’t see as well as some of the other students can see.”
A few years ago, DeWine said he had a discussion with an ophthalmologist who was telling him how, under Ohio law, elementary schools give eye screenings. However, the students that might need an eye exam simply have notes sent home indicating as much, and then there isn’t really any requirement for anything to happen after that.
“What we found out is if you take the whole state of the children who may need an eye exam or do need an eye exam, only about a third of them got the eye exam. That means two-thirds were not getting an eye exam and therefore, not getting glasses if they need glasses,” he said.
DeWine explained that the state of Ohio came up with this program and the funds to support it in order to address this gap in care.
Lance Himes, assistant director of the Ohio Department of Health, said he’s excited to put the fund into action and help children get their eye exams and glasses.
“It’s very important that children at a young age get glasses very early to help them learn to read. It’s critical (because) we know that 80% of learning comes through the sense of vision,” Himes said. “If kids can’t see, they may be struggling in school. Their emotional well-being, their social well-being could be struggling. We want to help that and move that along.”
Himes said they have 59 school districts enrolled with 34 additional school districts completing the enrollment process. They estimate that the state of Ohio will be able to provide these free eye services to 14,000 schools.
Tiffany Ways, chief school health officer for Health Partners of Western Ohio, the health center partnering with the state for the program, echoed that it’s important for students to have exams and glasses to be successful in the classroom.
“It really is so critical to the learning of kids,” Ways said. “That is really important because if we don’t have our glasses, it’s really hard for us to see and really pay attention in school.”
Health Partners started vision services in 2021 and will continue to expand with this new program, Ways said. Since then they have provided comprehensive eye exams to over 20,000 students; 10,000 of those students needed glasses.
Northeastern Superintendent Jack Fisher thanked DeWine and Health Partners for making it possible to offer these services to students “that are vital to their success.”
“We believe that it’s important to educate the whole student. Often that means taking care of basic needs, whether it be food, clothing, health services, and in this case today, vision services,“ he said, explaining they employ a mental health therapist, social worker and others. ”We want to make sure that our kids and our families in our district are well taken care of so that they can then be more successful in the classroom if their basic needs are met."
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