Trent Kittleman -- House of Delegates 9A

        Unfortunately, the day of our hearing turned out to be one of the busiest for Ways & Means.  They had 91 people signed up to testify on 17 different bills.  I, of course, did not really consider 91 witnesses as unusually excessive, since in my Judiciary Committee, we had hearings this session with over 300 witnesses.  Nonetheless, we probably didn’t get started off on the best foot with Ways & Means..

        What happens after a committee has a hearing is – you wait.  In Ways & Means, the bill goes to a subcommittee for adjudication (our bill went to the Education Subcommittee).  It can: (1) approve the bill as is and send it to the whole committee for a vote, (2) amend the bill and send it to the whole committee for a vote, or (3) ignore the bill.  Until the last week of the session, the Ways & Means Education Subcommittee chose “Door Number 3.”

The Senate.  The Senate Education, Health, and Environmental Affairs held a hearing on SB 604 on February 22^nd.  

        Shortly thereafter, the Committee voted unanimously, to approve the bill.  

        Shortly thereafter, the whole Senate voted, unanimously, to approve the bill. 

        Many amendments are simple; some amendments make substantial changes.  And then there are the amendments such as the one made to SB 604 in which the entire bill is stricken and in place of the requisite vision screening, the provides some training for "school health services program coordinators, and orders the creation and distribution of pamphlets about binary vision disorders.

        The End.  According to unwritten Legislative protocol, the fact a committee votes a sponsor’s bill out of committee at all is supposed to be a good thing for the sponsor.  I am still trying very hard to determine what it is that I am appreciating.  Granted, I could be at least pleased that something was going to be done, if the pamphlet version of the bill passed.  But that was never a possibility. 

        The revised, pamphlet version of SB 604 was brought up for a vote on the floor of the House around 10:45 pm on Sine Die.  If you are unfamiliar with Sine Die, it is the term used for the last day of the session, and each chamber remains in session all day long, until midnight of that day.  At the stroke of midnight, all activity ends, and even bills that were up for a vote will die if the vote has not been “taken” before midnight.

        With the House vote approving SB 604 occuring with just about one hour left in the 2017 session, there was no way in H*** that it could be sent back to the Senate for a determination by its committee to accept the House amendments, and then voted on by the full Senate.  Besides which, Senator Bates had made it abundantly clear well in advance of these votes, that the Senate was not about to accept an amendment that totally gutted the bill.  And so, our bills died.

         Now you know.  This is how it happens -- or doesn’t happen.  The more interesting question is, why?  Look for that article in the next update.

      Colleagues, what this amendment does is to restore the critical visual screening provisions to SB 604.

      I urge the members of this chamber to adopt this amendment

      Today in Maryland more than 25% of our children have some kind of binary vision problem, from lazy eye to double vision, convergence insufficiency, strabismus, etc., etc.

      When this condition is present in children, it can have a dramatically negative effect on their ability to succeed in school.

      Reading, for these children becomes torture, causing headaches, dizziness and fatigue.

      And because children have no idea that their eyes are seeing differently from their friends, they feel they “aren’t smart,” and become discouraged.

      Despite numerous studies, starting as far back as 1949, showing the devastating effect of visual impairments on children, we have not yet taken this issue seriously.

      This bill merely adds to the vision screenings that are already done in our schools that they shall “include the administration of a computerized screening that is designed to detect possible symptoms of visual impairments.”

      And the reason it is so critical to detect is because VISION THERAY CAN CORRECT THIS CONDITION IN 70 PERCENT TO 85 PERCENT OF THE CHILDREN WITH THE MOST COMMON TYPE IMPAIRMENT.

FEDERAL AND STATE MANDATE

      The fact is, we are already required to address this issue by the federal government

Indeed, pursuant to individual complaints, the Maryland Department of Education has found Howard, Harford, Anne Arundel, and Prince Georges counties to be out of compliance with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (the “IDEA”)

      In a Response Letter, the Maryland Department of Education said, “Any impairment in vision, regardless of severity, is covered, provided that such impairment . . . adversely affects a child’s educational performance.”   The Department found that the non-compliant counties were required to recognize such impairments and to “collect sufficient data” to determine if a child has a vision impairment.”

THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT HB458/SB604 DID – before the House amendment stripping the bill of all content except the instruction that schools issue pamphlets about the conditions.

      Colleagues, this amendment creates the means by which our schools can COLLECT THE DATA to determine if a child has a vision impairment.  The amendment puts back into the bill the simple requirement that schools expand their vision tests to COVER these types of binary vision disorders.

Pamphlets don’t diagnose vision conditions.

IMPACT ON JUVENILE JUSTICE

      Perhaps even more problematic, particularly for me, as a member of the Judiciary Committee, is the fact that studies all over the country have found a clear link between vision and anti-social behavior, including juvenile delinquency.

      One Maryland study found that up to 98% of the juveniles incarcerated in the Hickey School suffered from vision impairments – almost none of which were caused by poor acuity.

If you think about it, this makes sense.

      Just imagine the damage it does to the self-esteem of an already at-risk student to go to school and find that he or she can’t get through the reading or understand what she/he has read – while others do.

      The National Correctional Education Association taught its correctional officers how to look for and recognize these conditions inside prison and jail schools.     One of the subject matter experts for the training was responsible for a 29% reduction in recidivism at the San Bernardino Juvenile Hall for a 11 years in a row by properly identifying and addressing visual impairments.

      In FY 2014, Maryland had 1,196 juveniles committed, and another 4,805 detained awaiting disposition.

      It costs the State $38,360 to house a juvenile inmate for a year.

      For 1,196 juveniles at $38,360 each, the State spends $45.9 million a year, just to house those who have been committed.

• If we are able to keep just 25% of those 11 hundred children out of the system, the State saves $11.5 million a year. 
• If proper identification eliminates 10% of that population, we save $4.5 million.
• If we can improve the vision screening to properly identify these children and keep just 1% of those children out of jail, the state saves half a million dollars.

      And the savings in children’s lives and futures is inestimable.

VALIDITY OF THE COMPUTER VISION TESTING

      One of the concerns expressed by the committee was about the technology; here are the facts

      This idea for this bill was brought to me by a Mom, by the name of Catherine Carter whose whole family has been affected by this condition and by the school system’s lack of knowledge about it.

      The efforts and the research she put into working for this bill are almost unbelievable.  Not only educate most of the legislature about the significant details of the entire issue, but she sought out vendors capable of providing the services so that we would have a precise estimate of what it would cost!   One of those vendors is RightEye, a three-year-old Maryland company that has created computer-based programs that screen for all sorts of vision issues as well as other conditions. (NOTE: vendors who helped us identify costs are clearly aware that the ultimate awarding of a contract must go through the procurement process).

      The science behind the computerized technology offered by RightEye (and possibly others) is backed by over 40 years of studies.  Right now, the Veterans Administration is using computer vision screening developed with RightEye to test their soldiers for Parkinson disease

      And for you baseball fans, RightEye has recently signed a contract with Major League Baseball for vision testing of its players.

      The American Academy of Pediatrics, in 2016 issued a policy statement on visual system assessments in infants, children and young adults in which they stated, “Instrument-based screening devices for vision screening are available commercially and have extensive validation.

The science is sound

The need is great

Federal and State law demands we test for these vision conditions

And children are suffering.

Please join with me in voting for this amendment.

To watch our testimony on the Binary Vision Screening Bill, CLICK HERE