New England Eye/Renaissance School Vision Center (NEERSVC): Integrating comprehensive eye exams with traditional educational evaluations in a school-based setting

Vision problems can act as a barrier to school performance, as well as social and physical development. However, eye care providers often remain disconnected from the school environment, particularly the process of school-based educational evaluations for children with learning difficulty.

In 2007, Boston Renaissance Charter Public School (BRCPS) partnered with the New England Eye Institute (NEEI) to establish the NEERSVC, a full-service eye clinic located directly in BRCPS. One of the primary goals of this partnership was to enhance the multidisciplinary resources needed to prepare children to succeed in school.

Historically, BRCPS students identified as having learning difficulty were referred for multidisciplinary evaluation by educators and school-based specialists, with little information regarding the visual function of the student. With the inception of the NEERSVC, a comprehensive eye exam has become an early step in this referral process so that visual barriers to learning can be treated expediently.

This model has minimized referrals for educational evaluations, particularly in kindergarteners, and allowed more efficient evaluation by other specialists when learning difficulty persists. Moreover, 60% of children in the special education program were found to have vision problems (75% with refractive error, 10% with strabismus, 3% with amblyopia, 15% with other binocular vision problems) that impact their education. While most of these children remain in special education programs, additional services due to correctable visual impairment have been minimized.

Case examples will highlight the impact of vision correction on school performance and reinforce the importance of novel approaches to pediatric eye care delivery.