Tri-City United Schools teamed up with Let’s Smile, Inc. again this past school year to provide $14,002.00 in no-cost dental work for kids enrolled in the school district, according to TCU Community Education Director Layne Wilbright. It’s a partnership that started in the spring of 2024, and there is no cost to the school as well as families.
Let’s Smile is a non-profit organization out of Owatonna, started in 2013, that provides mobile oral health education and pediatric dental services in southeastern Minnesota, and they partner, as one part of their non-profit, with local school districts to provide services to children that may not otherwise receive those services.
Let’s Smile Founder and Executive Director Holly Jorgensen says, “We provide dental service where the kids are at. Many of our families are low income and can’t take a day off of work. We go where the kids are, and the parents don’t need to be there.”
There are currently 39 schools in southern Minnesota that Let’s Smile provides outreach mobile clinics at. The clinics can handle about 18 children a day, with some schools needing as many as three days in a row, according to Jorgenson. She says, “As families begin to understand what we do, it breaks down barriers and more families use the service.”
Jorgensen said that each kid gets basic preventative dental care, including a screening, cleaning, x-rays, fluoride treatment, and sealant. Kids are then sent home with a report about the status of their teeth for parents, which includes any further care that might be necessary.
TCU Schools held three mobile clinics in the fall of 2025 and spring of 2026, according to Wilbright, helping serve a total of...
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