All students in the Syracuse City School District will be receiving a free dental kit this week, including a toothbrush, toothpaste, and dental floss.

Second-grade students at Martin Luther King Jr Elementary School got their kits Friday. Each kit contains a toothbrush, toothpaste and dental floss. The dental kits will be handed out at the school all week. The Syracuse City School District plans on handing out more than 20,000 kits to all of its students this year as part of a district-wide campaign to improve students’ dental health.

Kits with adult-sized toothbrushes will be available for middle and high school students, and smaller, youth-sized toothbrushes will be available for elementary students.

The kits were purchased by the Syracuse City School District and are a collaboration between SCSD, New York State Preferred Source Program for New Yorkers Who are Blind, and the Central Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired (CABVI) of Utica/Syracuse – who assembled the kits.

“Dental hygiene is critical in keeping our students healthy, and these kits will go a long way in encouraging healthy dental habits among our students,” Syracuse City School District Superintendent Anthony Q. Davis said. “We are hopeful that these kits will positively impact the health of our students by encouraging them to develop healthy dental habits each day, and we appreciate the team at CABVI who helped assemble these kits so they are ready for our students to use.”

Syracuse City School District families are also encouraged to enroll their children in School Based Health Centers, which offer dental, medical, and mental health care – with no out of pocket cost – to children attending Delaware, Dr. Weeks, Franklin, Grant, H.W. Smith, PSLA at Fowler, STEAM at Dr. King, and Syracuse STEM at Blodgett.