At a meeting of the licensing board overseeing optician licensure, members reviewed recent exam results and debated whether to limit how long a candidate may carry credit for a passed portion of the newly subdivided eyewear exam before being required to retake the entire eyewear section. The board voted to table the proposal until its next meeting to allow staff to gather comparisons and consider the policy’s equity and administrative impacts.

Practitioner licensing staff member Celeste Daldell reported that, in the November testing cycle, 11 candidates took the eyewear practical: eight passed and three failed. Six candidates took the contact lens portion and all six passed, and six candidates passed the state-law portion. Celeste identified the application fee as $200 and said candidates must pay the application fee for each attempt.

Board members described the separation of the eyewear exam into two parts — fitting and problem solving — as a recent change intended to improve fairness and test design. That change prompted the question of how long a candidate who passes one of those subparts should be able to use that passing result toward the full eyewear requirement. Staff said the separation was new this year and that a time limit did not previously exist because the eyewear section had not been subdivided.

The board discussed two approaches: capping the number of attempts a candidate can take to use a passed subpart (for example, four attempts) or establishing a time window during which the passed subpart remains valid (options discussed included two years or three years). “Two years sounded reasonable and generous,” one member said, while others urged that extending the window to three years might better accommodate candidates who can afford only one attempt per year. A public commenter, Herb Fletcher, said he favored a longer window, recounting that a classmate took three years to pass and raising concerns about disadvantaging low‑income candidates.

Several board members emphasized balancing accommodation for candidates with ensuring professional competency and customer safety. One member recommended researching how other licensing and certification boards treat similar situations; another noted that optometry uses a national exam administered by the National Board of Examiners for Optometrists, which operates under different rules than state-created exams.

Members also raised administrative concerns: tracking partial passes over time, ensuring fairness when exam dates vary year to year, and whether repeated failures should trigger additional training requirements before retaking an exam. After discussion, the chair moved to table the matter to the next meeting so staff could investigate practices at comparable boards and return with recommendations; the motion was seconded and carried by voice vote.

The board did not adopt any new time limits or attempt caps at the meeting. The board scheduled further consideration for its next meeting and adjourned after completing business.