BETTER SMILES AHEAD
Yvonne Kennedy’s last column as a school board member.
Six years ago, my retirement plans took an abrupt turn when I joined the Cape Breton-Victoria Regional School Board.
As a former teacher, I thought that I knew a lot about our school system but I quickly realized that I had so much to learn.
For this last column as a school board member, I would like to highlight the fluoride mouth rinse program in many of our elementary schools.
If you don’t have a child in elementary school, you are probably shaking your head in bewilderment. Before joining the school board, I had no idea that this was an option for children in our school system.
Twenty three of the elementary schools in the Cape Breton-Victoria Regional School Board have access to the weekly fluoride mouth rinse program for the purpose of strengthening tooth enamel that has been weakened by the daily presence of plaque and sugars in the mouth.
This program only takes about five minutes of class time each week and is quite simple for even the youngest students to learn and do. Children rinse for one minute with a 0.2 per cent concentration of sodium fluoride solution, supervised by volunteers who have been trained by a public health dental hygienist.
At this point, I must confess that I am only familiar with this program because one of these dental hygienists, Joyce Lind, is a fellow school board member and Sandra Margettie, another school board member is a regular mouth rinse volunteer at Harbourside Elementary in her home community of Whitney Pier.
Like fluoride toothpaste, fluoride mouth rinse is not meant to be swallowed. The amount of fluoride in a single rinse is so small that even if a child swallows it by accident, it is not harmful.
Studies have shown that children who rinse once a week with the fluoride solution can expect to have fewer cavities in their lifetime. The program is paid for by public health services so the money for this program does not come out of the educational budget. There is no cost to the children, the families or the schools.
The fluoride mouth rinse program would not be possible without the support of our trained community volunteers. A public health dental hygienist is in charge of setting up the program in a school, but the dedicated volunteers actually deliver the program each week. They prepare the solution, bring the materials to the classroom, give out the mouth rinse, supervise the rinsing, collect the used solution and record the number of students who took part.
These volunteers in our elementary schools are the people who actually make the program happen.
It is important for the school principal and the staff to support the program volunteers. Public health services support the volunteers in a number of ways, such as providing a thorough training session each year, choosing a contact volunteer in each school and making the dental hygienists available as resource people.
Co-operation to run a smooth program involves the school administration and the teachers as well. The school administration provides class lists and safe storage for supplies. The teachers distribute and collect consent forms and welcome the volunteers into their classrooms once a week.
The purpose of this program is obvious. It builds strong teeth. Dental cavities are caused by a breakdown of tooth enamel, but in the presence of fluoride, tooth enamel is strengthened and more resistant to decay. Dental cavities are the most common chronic disease of children aged 6-11.
The fluoride mouth rinse program in our elementary schools will give our children a healthier mouth which will translate into better overall health. Doesn’t that just make you smile?
Writing this “Youth in Action” column has been a privilege and an honour for me. I have met so many students that gave me confidence that our future will be secure in their capable hands. I have met teachers that made me proud to have belonged to that profession. I have had conversations with parents who were so pleased to see their child’s accomplishments in print. Many of these columns have found a place of honour on the kitchen fridge and that makes me so happy.
I thought that I would be writing this column for a few more years, but that was not in the cards. Goodbyes are always difficult and my thanks go out to Carl Fleming, managing editor of the Cape Breton Post, for giving me the opportunity to do a bit of “bragging” about all the good things that are happening in the classrooms of the Cape Breton-Victoria Regional School Board.