Richard Broady, a first-grader at Redd Elementary School in South Richmond, was one of 97 students to receive new glasses Thursday thanks to a nonprofit partnership. Accompanying him were his aunt, Natiqua Johnson, and her husband. (Photo by Sarah King)
Richard Broady turned 8 years old last week, but the Elizabeth Redd Elementary School first-grader had another present waiting for him at school on Thursday morning: a new pair of prescription glasses, handed over by none other than Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Mayor Levar Stoney.
The glasses were thanks to a new nonprofit partnership with Richmond-based Conexus and California-based Vision To Learn to provide city students with free screenings, eye exams and glasses announced Thursday morning in the Redd Elementary auditorium.
“It’s feels good to have glasses,” Richard says, grinning in his auditorium seat with the new pair of prescription frames resting on his face. “My birthday was on Wednesday, and my party was on Saturday, and today I shook the mayor’s hand!”
According to Vision To Learn, one in five students naturally require glasses in school, but, particularly in low-income communities, 95 percent of kids don’t have them. In the past month, each of the 389 students at Redd were screened, and 32 percent — 104 students — were found to have a potential vision problem. On Thursday, 97 students received shiny new glasses.
Over the next two years, Conexus will provide more than 20,000 students in Richmond Public Schools with free vision screenings, and Vision To Learn will cover the cost of eye exams and glasses to more than an estimated 7,000 RPS students.
“Richmond is grateful for this partnership and proud to be the first Virginia community in which every child, K-12, will be provided the glasses they need to achieve inside and outside of the classroom,” Stoney says.
Vision To Learn currently serves children in 180 cities across the country, and this year, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative provided a grant to help the nonprofit serve up to 200,000 more kids by 2020. The initiative is also supported by the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, Robins Foundation and Richmond Community Foundation.
“Through this partnership now, our Richmond Public Schools students are going to have the resources to be as successful as anybody else in the state of Virginia,” says Interim Superintendent Thomas Kranz.
Kranz also pointed out that Redd Elementary is now fully accredited despite just a year ago being on the “denied list” — a statement that received a standing ovation from the audience of parents, teachers, staff and students.
“Students, congratulations. This is the story that’s in Richmond Public Schools — we focus on the negatives, but let me say our positives far outweigh our negatives,” Kranz says. “And we are going to reach greater heights. Nothing is going to stop us from reaching full accreditation status and we’re going do it with one thing — the thing we can control — which is hard work.”
Stoney, McAuliffe and Kranz each repeatedly emphasized the necessity of being able to see in order to learn effectively and perform successfully inside the classroom. Onstage, students could be seen looking around the room, as if for the first time, once outfitted with their new frames. A girl sitting back in her auditorium seat glanced around and said, “Wow.”
“If you can’t see the blackboard, you can’t read the books in front of you — if you can’t do that folks, then you can’t learn the skills to bring companies to the Commonwealth of Virginia,” McAuliffe says.
While receiving his glasses on stage, Richard Broady was so excited that he seized the opportunity to take the microphone from McAuliffe and thank everyone in the auditorium. He also pointed to his aunt, Natiqua Johnson, and said he wanted everyone to know, “how much I love that woman right there.”
Johnson said she and her husband are thrilled for their nephew. “We’re just really appreciative for the opportunity they gave him, with his glasses. He’s had problems with his vision before, so we’re just really excited about it – and clearly he’s excited too,” Johnson says, laughing. “So hopefully he can have a successful school year – he’s been doing so well already, and this is just going to enhance it even more.”
