Students Receive Free Eye Exams, Glasses From VSP Eyes of Hope

Removing barriers to learning for our students is paramount to helping them succeed but many students don’t realize that poor vision is holding them back.  

Many students know their eyesight is not great, but don’t know when or how to get an eye exam or glasses.

For nearly a decade, SDCOE’s Juvenile Court and Community Schools (JCCS) and VSP Eyes of Hope have been bringing the eye exam room to our students, helping them overcome some of the challenges they face to getting proper eye care.

This year, the VSP Vision mobile clinic stopped in all four regions, seeing approximately 100 students over four days. They’ll also visit Monarch School later this year.

Louis, a student at 37ECB, was grateful to VSP Vision for the clinic and the warm staff who helped alleviate some anxiety he felt about the exam.  

“They were friendly and helpful. I felt connected immediately and felt I was getting taken care of,” he said. “I’m really glad that I got this opportunity because if this didn’t happen today, I wouldn’t have gone anywhere else to do this.”

JCCS nurse Ellyson Slater-Kobetsky has been identifying students in need of glasses and connecting them with the VSP Eyes of Hope program for eye exams for nearly a decade.

The program brings in volunteer optometrists to provide eye exams and issue prescriptions for glasses. Students can select a pair of frames and will either have the glasses made inside VSP’s mobile clinic and ready that day or sent out to their lab and delivered in a few weeks.

“Every year we are finding students with a stigmatism or needing a very strong prescription,” said Slater-Kobetsky. “Once they get their pair of glasses, they can see and learn, removing one of the hurdles they may have, and it helps lift them up to their maximum potential.”

Throughout the year, Slater-Kobetsky conducts pre-exams using a Spot Vision Screener on as many students as possible to identify individuals that need comprehensive eye exams and possibly glasses. Those students are invited to attend the free mobile clinic.