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When Shanda Flemming signed a permission slip for her nine-year-old son, Michael, to receive a dental examination at school, she had no idea what the repercussions would end up being.
Flemming agreed to sign the permission slip, thinking it would just be for a routine teeth cleaning, a way for the Baltimore public school to ensure none of its students would miss class due to poor dental health and toothaches.
It isn’t necessarily unusual for public schools to be providing their students with dental care. Studies have shown that 1 in 5 children between the ages of 5 and 11 actually suffer from having at least one untreated tooth in their mouth.
The longer these children go untreated, the more likely they are to miss class and perform poorly in school in the future because of the pain of their teeth.
If the parents of these children continue to not bring their children to the dentist because they can’t afford to, they put these kids at risk of potentially even dying from the health complications of these toothaches.
The Baltimore City Schools website also maintains that schools should provide dental work to their public school students. Parents of these children simply have to provide their written consent by signing a permission slip.
What Flemming and this investigation are now noticing, however, is that the policy online doesn’t mention that the school’s provided dental care can perform extractions. They wrote that their practice “includes routine examinations and cleaning, dental x-rays, sealants (when appropriate) and preventive and restorative services, such as filling cavities.”
But there’s not one mention of tooth extraction – which is what Michael underwent on that fateful day.
When Flemming sent her son off to school one morning, she knew Michael would be seeing the dentist, but she never expected for her son to return home, late, with three of his teeth missing.
At Michael’s appointment, the dentist claimed that three of the child’s teeth were infected and had to be extracted to avoid further health problems.
Michael said through tears, “They just said they was gonna clean my teeth.” But the boy had been forced to undergo three painful tooth extractions, without receiving any pain medication beforehand.
The school also hadn’t bothered to contact Flemming before moving forward with the procedure, which is what infuriates Michael’s mother the most.
“I’m angry about this. I don’t think that it should have happened like that,” Flemming said, angrily. She believes the school should have contacted her before performing serious dental work on her son, particularly if they weren’t going to administer any pain medication to make the procedure any easier.
To make matters worse, Michael’s procedure took a long time and caused him to miss his bus home. That day, he ended up having to walk one mile home, by himself, while his mouth was still swollen and painful after the extraction.
“He walked home alone after having three teeth extracted from his mouth. He could have fell out or anything,” Flemming said. She added that she felt completely blindsided by the entire process.
“I just don’t understand how a school or a company can take it in their hands to do something like this to a child,” she finished.
Flemming spoke with her local news station, making it abundantly clear that she’s not going to stop asking the school or public health officials questions until she gets to the bottom of this case.
According to Flemming, Michael had even already been scheduled to see their family dentist on Monday, which prompts even more questions about the communication between the parents and the school.
Many more questions remain to be answered, like “Why did the school allow serious dental work – without making a single phone call to parents? Why didn’t the school alert the mother? Why was Michael allowed to walk home alone? And why wasn’t he given medication after the procedure?”
The news station, WJZ, reached out to Baltimore City Schools for a comment about this situation, but the school declined the request for comment. The school maintains that this is a matter of a child’s health, which raises HIPAA and privacy concerns.
The dental provider maintains the same stance; they refuse to provide further details about Michael’s case.
What are your thoughts on this matter? You can watch an interview of Shanda Flemming here:
