Mountain Top fundraiser provides 1,400 blue light glasses to Summit elementary students
Breckenridge Elementary School students on Tuesday were the first of 1,400 Summit School District students to receive blue light glasses thanks to Mountain Top Children’s Museum.
Mountain Top raised $3,600 for the glasses, which will be given out in the coming days to all elementary students in the district. Blue light glasses can help to reduce headaches, tiredness and other visual symptoms from extended time looking at computer screens.
Mountain Top Executive Director Tiernan Spencer said she came up with the idea earlier in the school year out of a desire to help students who were struggling at home with Zoom meetings.
“We had Zoom after Zoom, and I found a little second grader crying in the bathroom,” Spencer said. “He said, ‘I can’t do another Zoom meeting anymore.’ I kind of wanted to make sure the kids could feel like superheroes again, to feel like they could get through their next meeting. So I started this, and then I had all of these donors that wanted to jump in.”
Spencer quickly received 18 donations totaling $3,600 and informed the district — for which Mountain Top is a “collaborative program provider” — about the idea.
“It’s just not a typical year,” Breckenridge Elementary Principal Khristian Brace said. “We’re trying to be cognizant of how much kids are on-screen and how much screen time they have.”
Though many students across the district are in quarantine due to contact tracing, elementary students attend in-person classes four days a week. On Wednesdays, a day designated for cleaning and sanitizing school buildings, students Zoom with teachers from home.
Support Local Journalism
Support Local Journalism
As a Summit Daily News reader, you make our work possible.
Summit Daily is embarking on a multiyear project to digitize its archives going back to 1989 and make them available to the public in partnership with the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection. The full project is expected to cost about $165,000. All donations made in 2023 will go directly toward this project.
Every contribution, no matter the size, will make a difference.