Grants help Sarcoxie School District replace vision-screening device

John Hacker, The Joplin Globe, Mo.
Updated ·2 min read

Aug. 28—SARCOXIE, Mo. — Two grants will help the Sarcoxie School District replace an old device used for helping diagnose vision problems in children.

April Jones, school nurse, said the district was awarded a $500 Maggie Elder Memorial Peers/Support Staff Grant from the Missouri Retired Teachers Association and Public School Personnel, and a $250 grant from the Sarcoxie Lions Club to help pay for a $6,500 vision-screening device.

"Today's donations were awesome," Jones said at the announcement Thursday at Wildwood Elementary School in Sarcoxie. "Our old machine quit, and we had had it for more than 25 years. We had to switch to a paper chart to screen this year, and that's more difficult for the younger kids."

Jones said the new device, called a PlusoptiX S12C, will screen for many more vision problems than the older device and will be easier to use.

"The old one screened children 3 years old to 5 years old," Jones said. "The new one you can use on children as young as 6 months, and it will catch nearsighted, farsighted, retraction errors. It will find dilated pupils. It's way beyond what our old one would do. It has a camera so you can see what's happening with a child's eyes, and it shows the results on a screen so you can immediately see whether a child has a problem."

Mary Ann Gregory, with Lawrence County Retired School Personnel, said the foundation created by the Missouri Retired Teachers Association and Public School Personnel, has grants available for teachers for classroom projects and for support staff such as nurses, bus drivers, janitors, cooks and others for important needs.

"It will be good for all the kids," she said of the new machine. "We would encourage teachers and support staff to apply for these grants next year."

Ed Hamm, with the Sarcoxie Lions Club, said programs to help with vision problems in children is part of the Lions Club's mission.

"We provide a lot of eyeglasses for kids; we do several of those a year," Hamm said. "That's one of our focuses. We're also doing more work helping kids with their hearing. We're a service organization in service to our community. We do fundraisers to raise our money so we can give it back out to people that need."

School Superintendent Phil Lewis said the district will cover the remainder of the cost of the machine and thanked the organizations for helping. He also commended Jones for going out and finding the grants to help with the cost of the machine.

For more information on grants available from the foundation, the name of which is Missouri Retired Teachers Foundation, people can go to https://mortf.com.