VAN NUYS: Lack of funding may shut down campus for visually impaired.
Sarah Greenseid contentedly worked her yarn on a recent morning, her perpetual smile not entirely masking the anxiety felt by the visually impaired 99-year-old.
"It's really too bad, the possibility of the school not continuing," Greenseid said during a textile arts class at the Van Nuys School for the Blind, located in a rented classroom behind St. Andrew's Lutheran Church. "It's a very important part of everyone's life to have a place to come to where we can share our same problems, interact and still have a class.
The main reason for the school's dire financial straits is the loss of its annual $75,000 Los Angeles Community Development Department grant, due to budget cutbacks and a restructuring of the agency's qualification criteria.
Fundraising campaigns have kept the school going, and there are last-ditch efforts to stave off closure.
Ophthalmologists Kerry Assil and Thomas Tooma have each donated $6,000 Lasik surgeries to be raffled off for the benefit of Retinitis Pigmentosa International, the school's parent organization, named for a genetic eye condition that leads to incurable blindness.
Each $25 donated will earn an entry in the raffle. Other details are at www.rpinternational.org.
"We hope that the donation from NVision Laser Eye Centers will help RPI reach its financial goals to help save the Van Nuys School for the Blind because its program provides training for the social, emotional and physical implications related to losing one's vision," Tooma said in an emailed statement.
"It is their lifeline to the light," Tooma continued. "Without that school, they are in the dark. That darkness is interrupted for at least 48 hours during the week when they go to the school. It also provides them lunch and they are even sent home with food."
Back at the St. Andrew's campus, close to a dozen visually impaired people were diligently making their rugs, mufflers and caps.
"I've been coming here for nine years; I also go to ceramics on Monday," said Patricia O'Connor of West Hills, who was creating a colorful wall hanging. "It's almost like a family to us, we've been meeting here for so long and we enjoy it so much.
"It gives people who have vision problems something really worthwhile to do, and we can see the benefits of our own work."
The school's search for a less-expensive venue has, so far, proven fruitless. The church is not unsympathetic, but has its own funding needs and rents out its campus to other organizations, including a Montessori preschool, to make ends meet.
"Our people are low-vision and many of them completely blind, so it's tricky to find another place for them," noted Laura Carlone, the school's site coordinator. "Here we have access to a kitchen and the run of the place, along with the preschool."
For Greenseid, who began volunteering at the school 29 years ago and became a student when her eyesight started to fail, the weekly class has become an important part of her independent existence.
"It keeps me busy," the Sherman Oaks nonagenarian said. "I do my own cooking, bookkeeping, banking and some shopping. My lifestyle is dependent on doing as much as I can as often as I can. Coming here is one of my very high priorities.
"Every day that I come here is important," Greenseid added. "I relate to the students and it's very rewarding. It's a way from them to get out of their homes."
