The Senate on Wednesday approved changes to a law approved last year that mandated that students get a comprehensive eye exam or be kept out of kindergarten.

Such exams would no longer be required. Instead, the focus would be on improving routine vision screenings that children already receive.

Eye exams would be required for children who fail the screenings, but there's no penalty for not getting them. The state budget has $500,000 to pay for some children's exams.

The Senate passed the proposal 36-11 and sent it back to the House for agreement. The House has already voted in favor of the bill but must vote again because of minor changes made by the Senate.

The original exam requirement caused an uproar after House Speaker Jim Black, a Mecklenburg County optometrist, had it written into last year's budget. School boards sued, saying the exams were a barrier to a constitutionally guaranteed free public education. Pediatricians and ophthalmologists said full eye exams for most 5-year-olds are medically unnecessary.

Fundraising questions

Optometrists pushed to keep the requirement, but the law became entangled in questions about Black's political fundraising. Optometrists had a practice of writing campaign checks, some of which Black received, with the payee line blank. Optometrists said they did not give money to get the eye exam requirement.

Optometrists support the new proposal.

"Certainly we would have preferred the mandatory eye exam bill, as exams are the gold standard of care," Max Raynor, president of the N.C. State Optometric Society, said in a statement. "But this bill was a good compromise for all parties and especially for the children of our state."

Sen. Jim Forrester, a general practitioner, opposed the changes. He said they left a back-end way for optometrists to get what they want.

Optometrists have five seats on the 10-member commission that would establish screening standards. That's enough people, said Forrester, a Gaston County Republican, to push through standards only optometrists can meet.