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NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (WIS) - So many people know the feeling of sliding on your first pair of glasses and finally being able to see a lot more clearly.

A new law is designed to bring that special moment to more children across South Carolina.

The legislation allows mobile optometry clinics to visit Title 1 schools, offering free screenings and eye exams and fitting and providing students with glasses, with parental consent.

“This will see that our children across the state — and I hope this spreads like wildfire — that they all are able to reach their full potential,” Gov. Henry McMaster said.

McMaster officially signed the new law earlier this year, but he commemorated it Wednesday at North Charleston Elementary School, where he was joined by other elected officials, Charleston County School District leaders and students, and representatives from the national nonprofit Vision to Learn.

The organization lobbied South Carolina’s legislature for the change in law, as its previous language had prohibited Vision to Learn from operating free mobile optometry clinics in South Carolina as it does in other states.

The General Assembly allowed Vision to Learn to operate on a trial basis over the last year before approving the permanent change in law. In that year, the nonprofit reports it provided more than 2,000 students from 17 schools in the Charleston County School District with eye exams, and 1,700 of those kids received free eyeglasses.

“Our program has found that the best way to solve this problem is by bringing access to students right here on campus,” Vision to Learn National Director Damian Carroll said.

CCSD Director of Nursing Ellen Nitz said the new law removes barriers that may be keeping kids from reaching their full potential in the classroom.

“Many of our families will face either financial burdens, transportation issues, parents having to leave work to get to appointments, and then just not even realizing that you need glasses,” Nitz said.

During Wednesday’s event, four CCSD elementary school students received their first pair of glasses, including second grader Taila Sanders, who had selected frames in her favorite color, pink.

“Everything is like so different. It’s like not blurry anymore,” Sanders said.

With the change in law now in effect, Vision to Learn said its next goal is to bring this clinic to more districts across the state and help more South Carolina kids see.

“Our young students experienced unprecedented hardships during the recent pandemic, and now going forward, having access to quality eyecare and prescription glasses will not be one more thing that they or their parents have to worry about,” Rep. William Cogswell, R – Charleston, said.

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Copyright 2022 WIS. All rights reserved.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WCSC) - If you have an idea on how to make South Carolina better for its children or concerns about issues affecting them, your opinion is wanted.

The Joint Citizens and Legislative Committee on Children is traveling around the state for its annual fall tour, starting next week, and is inviting South Carolinians to speak with them.

The panel, more commonly known as the Children’s Committee, is made up of a bipartisan group of six lawmakers — three from the state’s House of Representatives and three from the Senate — along with three citizens appointed by the governor and the heads of statewide agencies, including the Department of Mental Health, Department of Social Services, Department of Juvenile Justice, and Department of Education.

The feedback they have received during these hearings in past years had led to new laws at the State House.

“If whatever you’re talking about has merit, you have the opportunity to change legislation in South Carolina,” Sen. Katrina Shealy, R – Lexington and a committee member, said.

In recent years, the committee’s work has resulted in legislation to improve South Carolina’s adoption and fostering processes, put more regulations around vaping and offer paid family leave to state employees.

“What the committee’s charged with is to really address issues that affect children in the state of South Carolina,” Rep. Beth Bernstein, D – Richland, and a committee member, said. “It’s an opportunity for you to express concerns that you may have that are really relevant to what this committee’s charged with doing, and it might be an issue that we’re not even aware of.”

While most of the committee’s meetings during the year take place on State House grounds in Columbia, its fall hearing schedule gives members the chance to hear from more South Carolinians in other parts of the state.

The public hearings begin next Tuesday in Florence, followed by one in North Charleston on Sept. 22, in Greenville on Sept. 29, and two in Columbia on Oct. 12.

Any South Carolinian can come out to share their concerns or ideas for helping the state’s kids and families.

“We take that and evaluate it, and then we look toward how we can help in those areas, and then we try to craft legislation,” Bernstein said.

“And that way, we can have people working on it on both sides of the aisle,” Shealy added.

People can sign up to speak for up to five minutes at each meeting by emailing [email protected]. They can also send written comments to that email address.

The deadline to submit written testimony is Oct. 14.

“There are children all over the state that need our help, so we need to hear what would be beneficial for every child in South Carolina,” Shealy said.

Times/locations for Children’s Committee 2022 Fall Hearings:

Copyright 2022 WCSC. All rights reserved.

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCIV) — On March 13, The North Charleston Hockey Team thought it would be just another game at Carolina Ice Palace.

Until the game suddenly came to a stop, when one of their own went into full cardiac arrest.

"The first thing out of my mouth was 'what the heck happened,' and Dave said 'dude you were dead for like four or five minutes and yea you passed out on the bench, you got revived and they brought you the hospital,'" said James Pitts, the cardiac arrest survivor.

Luckily, one of his teammates Tom Donnelly and two other people jumped into action.

"Within 30 seconds chest compressions were started which is the most important thing you can do," said Tom Donnelly, a CPR Trainer and Trash Pandas Ice Hockey Team Member.

Pitts said despite it all, he is grateful where and when the incident happened.

“Luckily everything worked out fantastic, I just got really lucky the stars were aligned and it was also lucky that it happened at the ice rink which is only about 2 miles from Trident Medical Center," he said.

He also hopes sharing his story will save future lives.

"It’s never too late or it’s important to learn how to do CPR and operate a AED machine because you can save somebody’s life," Pitts said.

Even though Pitts still cannot believe what was going on, hockey was still the first thing on his mind.

"Initially I was a little bit in shock, it took me a while to re orient myself when I was in the emergency room, because I just kept asking you know what happened. Actually my wife says that I kept asking did we win," Pitts said.

Through it all, he said he is not hanging up his skates anytime soon.

“I’ll never quit playing hockey no mater what," he said.

Two weeks ago, Pitts made his debut back on the ice but he had a hard fall and will be out for another four to five weeks. But he said his love for the game does not stop and he's counting down the days until he's playing with his team again.

Trident Hospital now uses the case of James Pitts for their CPR training classes to continue educating people on how to possibly save a life.

NORTH CHARLESTON — One day, a 7-year-old Michael Nesbitt walked into an appliance store at the Pinehaven Shopping Center with his parents.

This was in the early 1960s, an era when the civil rights movement was sweeping through the country. Cities everywhere, including Charleston and its surrounding communities, were slowly integrating public spaces.

Nesbitt’s father, Johnny, had wanted to make a purchase at the store, which sold household items like washing machines, dryers and refrigerators. But he couldn’t. A White male store worker told Johnny Nesbitt — a truck driver for 45 years who never missed a day, his son said — that he couldn’t buy the item because the father didn’t have any credit.

The Nesbitt family left the store empty-handed.

A few years later, that incident lingered in the back of the child’s mind when Nesbitt, then 9, watched construction crews clearing homes in Union Heights to make way for the incoming Interstate 26. The highway — the portion from Columbia to Charleston was completed in 1969 — was constructed during a time when “urban renewal” road projects were built throughout Black communities, causing economic and physical damage.

The interstate’s Exit 218 at Spruill Avenue split Union Heights in half. The neighborhood, founded shortly after the Civil War by freed slaves who settled on an abandoned plantation, lost businesses, homes and houses of worship. Furthermore, the project disrupted the community’s cohesiveness and vibrancy.

“I thought to myself, ‘Here they go again — White folks are taking stuff from us,’” said Nesbitt, now 64, recalling how the highway project displaced his aunt’s sweet shop and his family’s church, Francis Brown United Methodist. “We just felt like we were being infringed upon.”

Today, decades later, there is a chance at stitching Union Heights back together while also making good use of the now-vacant Exit 218 property by creating affordable housing on the site. And government officials have a chance to, in a way, right a past wrong. But the effort will have its challenges — mainly in keeping the new houses affordable in the community that has seen property values rapidly rise.

Coming up with a plan

The S.C. Department of Transportation is in the process of transferring to the city ownership of the former site of the interstate exit, now an empty stretch of land between Joppa and Irving avenues.

The ramp was removed during construction of the Port Access Road that leads to the new Leatherman Terminal. A quitclaim deed has been submitted to the Charleston County Register of Deeds office, according to DOT. The transfer of the property was an environmental commitment noted in the community mitigation plan for the port project.

The former highway ramp is now open land with overgrown vegetation. Houses on the north and south sides of the neighborhood — once divided by infrastructure — are now visible to each other. The idea is to fill the empty strip with new homes and mend the once divided neighborhood.

The North Charleston-based Coastal Community Foundation has taken the lead on drafting a preliminary plan for the site. For the past few years, the foundation has been engaged in community conversations up and down the South Carolina coast with neighborhoods to get a sense of the most important needs.

“In those conversations, one of the key areas that came up time and again was affordable housing,” CCF program officer Kaela Hammond told dozens of people during an Aug. 23 Union Heights neighborhood meeting.

Since 2017, the foundation has partnered with Boeing to work with local organizations to help implement affordable housing in North Charleston neighborhoods. To that end, the foundation partnered with F.A. Johnson II, a developer who has been dubbed CCF’s technical adviser, to survey potential properties for new homes.

“One site that kept coming up throughout all the community conversations we had was the former Exit 218,” Hammond said.

CCF’s role in all of this is to bring together community groups — such as Habitat For Humanity, the Community First Land Trust and others — to help create a vision for the site.

“Our goal is to bring those partners together with community residents to make sure that this property is developed in a way that’s respectful of the community fabric, your history here, and that’s really driven by community input,” Hammond told residents at the meeting.

Johnson concurred.

“The real big question is how do we keep this in quasi-public hands?” he said. “Certainly a private developer could come in, purchase it and do something that’s not consistent (with) what goals and objectives may be communitywide.”

The city seems to be amenable to CCF’s proposal. Councilman Michael Brown called the idea a “good plan” and said the overall goal for the Exit 218 property is to see affordable housing on the site.

Making the homes affordable

The challenge remains in how these organizations can keep newly built homes at a reasonable price.

The proposal, which is not finalized, was presented during the Aug. 23 meeting to solicit community feedback before it is presented to the city for consideration. It calls for 30 houses across the 2-acre lot. Roughly $3.6 million to $4.1 million would likely need to be raised as subsidy to build the homes at affordable levels, Johnson said.

The cheapest range proposed for the houses was $154,000 to $220,000. That’s for a single-family household making $51,000 to $73,000, which is 80 percent of the Charleston area median income, Johnson said.

Many residents said the proposed price range is not based on a realistic assessment of the incomes of the people in Union Heights. Doris Ferguson said she is concerned that those who rent houses in the neighborhood wouldn’t be able to afford to buy the new homes, if they’re ever built.

“You should base it on the income of the people here if you want to give us a chance,” Ferguson said.

Other concerns, like flooding, were also raised. The neighborhood is known to see high water levels when it rains. Residents at the meeting said they have complained about flooding for years, but nothing has been done to fix the problem. New homes will only exacerbate the issue, they said.

The North Charleston-based Community First Land Trust, a local organization formed several years ago with the goal of creating affordable housing in communities, could play a role in keeping the homes affordable.

More than 200 land trusts exist nationwide, and they are designed to help low-income homeowners build equity.

Typically, the land trust first obtains the land. It then engages a contractor to build homes on the properties. People then buy the homes at reasonable prices, but the trust keeps the land so that residents are not displaced.

The Community First trust has a partnership with Habitat for Humanity. Through their collaboration, Habitat has already built two homes in the neighborhood on lots owned by the trust. Two more homes are in the works.

The houses will sell for about $160,000, said Skip Mikell, who’s with the land trust and also serves as president of the Union Heights neighborhood association.

The Exit 218 project could be an effort to help fend off gentrification, something that has already touched the community that is increasingly seeing more White homeowners and new development on the fringes.

Like several other neighborhoods between Charleston and North Charleston in what is known as the Neck Area, Union Heights has seen property values skyrocket due to developmental pressure from areas both north and south of its boundaries.

Nesbitt said he, like other Union Heights homeowners, get calls almost daily from people seeking to buy and likely flip the property for large profits.

“The calls have become borderline harassment,” Nesbitt said.

Some in the neighborhood are excited about the prospect of getting the Exit 218 land returned to the community.

“I was excited about the fact that we could knit our community back,” said Henrietta Woodward. “Why should we not get that property back?”

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - The South Carolina Department of Transportation is looking for the community’s input as developers continue to move forward with the I-526 Lowcountry Corridor West Project.

There will be a community mitigation meeting in North Charleston Saturday where project directors will update the public on their plan and give them time to ask questions.

According to the project’s official website, it would span approximately 9.7 miles between Paul Cantrell Boulevard in West Ashley and Virginia Avenue in North Charleston.

Project Director Joy Riley says the purpose of the meeting is to update the public on the community mitigation plan. Riley says this is their way of creating benefits for the communities that will be directly impacted by the project.

Russelldale, Ferndale, Liberty Park and Highland Terrace are the communities that will be directly impacted. These are predominantly minority communities.

Riley says over the last three years they have been checking in with those communities and are trying to make sure the community mitigation plan addresses their concerns.

Residents have shared one of their biggest concerns is losing their homes due to the widening of the 526/I-26 interchange.

Riley says a lot of the programs in the community mitigation plan are focused on increasing things like generational wealth, building affordable housing, scholarships, and job training opportunities.

About 100 households will be torn down for this project. Riley says construction won’t get started until all residents have been relocated to replacement housing they are planning on building.

“We are planning on building 100 new apartment units that are affordable but also 45 single-family lots with single-family homes, and a first-time home buyer grant program that helps those folks that are low income,” Riley says.

Although widening the interstate will get rid of homes in the area, officials believe it will help limit travel times, congestion and more.

Devin Clark, a West Ashley resident, says he sees accidents all the time on the 526/I-26 interchange, and it often takes 20 minutes or more to go a few miles. Clark says he’s happy SCDOT is planning on doing something about it.

Saturday’s meeting starts at 10 a.m. at the Ferndale Community Center in North Charleston.

Copyright 2022 WCSC. All rights reserved.