Free Vision Screening Coming To Sartell Schools For the 2nd Year

SARTELL (WJON News)  -- Kids in the Sartell-St. Stephen's school district will be able to get a free vision screening next week. For the second year, the district has teamed up with the Sartell Lions Club for the KidSight program. Students Kindergarten through 5th Grade can get screened and it checks for common vision problems like nearsightedness, farsightedness, lazy eye, astigmatism, and more.

Principal Zach Dingmann says they are excited to be able to offer the program again:

"It's all about being proactive and early intervention for that and just diagnosing it and seeing it soon because a lot of the different things that the screening will find is curable or preventable so we can go ahead and you know whether that's through glasses or just routine checkups."

Dingmann says if anything comes up in the screening a referral letter is sent home informing the parents. Nikki Perius received a letter last year about her daughter Elle and was able to follow up with an eye doctor for astigmatism:

"And that is something that we would not have noticed and I don't think that she had any idea that she wasn't seeing things as clear as she should and with her stigmatism the doctor said that early prevention is best so that she can actually, so her eyes can become stronger so that eventually she might not need glasses."

Perius says Elle is excited to be wearing her glasses.  Dingmann says finding potential problems early only helps the students down the road

"Education research shows that about 80% of learning is visual and if a student has never gone to the eye doctor or has never been screened or anything like that, you have to put yourself in that student's shoes and they don't know what they don't know."

Perius says they are grateful to the KidSignt program for flagging the concern:

"This is something that we're very thankful for because it was very quick, and easy, and we wouldn't have known that she had any sort of vision issue so this program was something that helped our family out."

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The KidSight screening will take place at Oakridge Elementary on March 4th, Pine Meadow Elementary on the 5th, and at Riverview Intermediate School on the 6th.

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