The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Staff, classmates help out student
Leroy Elementary School staff and students raised about $1,500 to help a fellow classmate.
Leroy Elementary School staff and students raised about $1,500 to help a fellow classmate who has a severe visual impairment.
The money was raised through penny wars, a school-wide fundraising competition where each class collected coins and bills.
“We raised a lot more than we thought we could have,” said Principal Greg Miller. “Remember we only have about 193 students here.”
The funds raised will help fifth-grader Dylan LaMaster purchase lifechanging assistive technology called OrCam My Eye
An OrCam MyEye device is a breakthrough wearable artificial vision device designed to assist people who are blind or visually impaired, according to its website.
The intuitive, lightweight smart camera instantly and discreetly reads printed and digital text aloud — from any surface — and recognizes faces, products, and money notes, all in real time, it also states.
This technology costs about $3,500.
Dylan said the device will clip onto his glasses and read anything in front of him.
“It will help me in so many ways,” he said. “I‘m really excited.”
Dylan is able to read braille and excels academically, Miller said.
“He is in a regular classroom and functions like all the other kids,” he said. “All the kids know him and watch out for him. He has a cane that helps him maneuver around the school.”
The OrCam device will help him academically and socially.
“So right now anything we do in class has to be brailled ahead of time because otherwise we wouldn’t have time for him to get it, but now if a teacher decides they want to do something spur of the moment like an activity sheet or something to read, he can point to it and the camera would pick that up and read it to him,” Miller said.
“It will make him be more independent. He’s a really sharp kid. The issue with Dylan is to devise ways to get the information to his head fast enough. It will help him to do a lot of things that people take for granted.”
The out pouring of community support did not end at Leroy Elementary School, Capps Pizza in Leroy Township will also be donating proceeds from their golfing outing fundraiser this summer, Miller said.