Royer Greaves School for Blind

Royer-Greaves School for Blind (RGS) was founded in 1921 by Dr. Jesse Royer Greaves, an educator who recognized that there were many blind children who were being denied an education because they were unable to attain IQ levels required by the schools available to them at the time. The site of the original school was Dr. Greaves' home in Stafford Pennsylvania. Dr. Greaves named the school in memory of her father, Dr. Joseph Warren Royer and her husband Harry R. Greaves. Establishing a school to educate the student population was a pioneering concept; RGS was the first of its kind in the country.

The school subsequently moved to King of Prussia and then to its current location on a small estate in Paoli, Pennsylvania in 1941. RGS was incorporated as a nonprofit educational institution in 1943 and has since been governed by a Board of Directors composed of volunteer community representatives. During the 1960s the facilities were expanded to include a gymnasium, library, swimming pool and residence hall. Afterwards, the school building was renovated in 1984.

Since the 1980s, RGS has operated 365 days a year. For more than seventy-five years RGS has benefited students between the age of five and twenty-one. Over time, as more children with disabilities were main-streamed into public school, the profile of the student population changed; while these were still children with visual impairments, they were also more profoundly disabled, thus requiring more intensive individualized attention and training.

Because of this changing student profile, the Board of Directors recognized that a continuum of services was needed to provide residential and educational programs for these students as they entered adulthood. To this end, RGS developed an adult residential program in 1989 and in 1990 obtained a license to operate an Adult Training Facility through the Department of Public Welfare. In 2000 RGS implemented the deaf/blind program to educate students with visual and hearing impairments.

RGS continues to look to the future for its students. The School's program development includes modern assistive technology to support the students in their classrooms and daily lives, which will enable them the opportunity to reach their fullest potential.