Gravel Driveway Repair in Nashua, NH

NASHUA, N.H. —

The Traveling Tooth Fairies are bringing big smiles to students across the Nashua School District, offering in-school dental care from pre-K through high school.

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Each week, the nonprofit organization sets up a dental office inside a different school building, returning to the rotation after visiting all of them.

The idea is to remove barriers. No child is turned away, insurance or not.

The Traveling Tooth Fairies help families struggling with finances, work schedules, or transportation and teach children how to be in charge of good oral health. Children can take part with a permission slip from a parent or guardian.

"It's our life. We eat, sleep, and breathe this," said Tooth Fairy Myra Nikitas. "This is our work, our passion, and seeing these kids just to help them."

Nikitas and Mary Duquette are not only Tooth Fairies, they are certified public health dental hygienists.

Under the general supervision of Dr. John Echternach, they provide cleanings, screenings, fluoride treatments, sealants, and even fix cavities with no drill fillings.

"There's many many children not only in Nashua, not only in New Hampshire, but all over the country. They do not get dental care," Echternach said.

The program is supported by donations and sponsors, including the Nashua Lions Club and Northeast Delta Dental.

"Everybody deserves a healthy smile and the best way to do that is to start with early intervention, with a school-based program, and it's very hard not to get involved with very passionate hygienists like the tooth fairies," said Northeast Delta Dental president and CEO Tom Raffio.

"I'm so happy that my tooth hasn't hurt anymore," said one student after a visit with the Tooth Fairies at a Nashua elementary school.

The Traveling Tooth Fairies hope to spread their wings and inspire more programs like this throughout New Hampshire.

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NASHUA, N.H. —

The city of Nashua is thinking about converting one of its former middle schools into some housing units, but there is an obstacle: the school's auditorium.

Nashua's Elm Street Middle School closed its doors to students in 2024, and redevelopment plans have been in the works for a few years.

Earlier this month, four proposals were presented to the city's Board of Aldermen, and two finalists were later shared with the public. Both plans would turn the site into mixed-income housing units.

Longtime resident George Blais said he likes the neighborhood as it is.

"It's nice to walk your dog and enjoy people," he said. "We have enough apartment buildings around as it is."

Mayor Jim Donchess said the city has considered a number of suggestions, such as turning it into a park, but at Tuesday's Board of Aldermen meeting, he said the overwhelming response from the community was to convert the site into a place where people could live.

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But the school's auditorium, the Keefe Auditorium, needs to be fixed up. The mayor said the heating and sprinkler systems, along with the bathrooms, are not up to city code. He said investing in those renovations is non-negotiable.

"If the Keefe is going to be used, if it's going to remain up, those two things need to be done or committed to when we begin the housing project," he said. "I'm not suggesting we vote tonight, but I am suggesting we should give this to the voters, help us make the decision, and just be bound by whatever their thinking is."

Donchess said the cost to renovate the auditorium is $25 million. Nashua Alderman Richard Dowd asked for an estimate of how much it would cost to just tear it down, but that estimate is not yet available.

The Board of Aldermen must now decide which plan to move forward with and whether it should include funding for renovations.

Some residents, like Blais, have already made up their minds.

"It's nice the way it is. I hate to see it being torn down," he said.

The basement of the United Way of Greater Nashua is ready to party. There are sandwiches, snacks, gifts and balloons to celebrate the most recent class to graduate from the Family Childcare Preparation Program run by the Nashua Smart Start coalition and the Community Engagement Training Center.

The program aims to build the local supply of childcare workers by lowering the entry barriers to get an available online certificate. The program also aims to provide additional support, mentoring and networking for participants. In the year that the program has been in place, it has helped train more than 100 students who speak English, Spanish, Portuguese and Swahili.

“The state of New Hampshire needs you,” said facilitator Emily Mercado. “Without child care, how can parents go to work?”

New Hampshire, like many other parts of the country, has been grappling with a severe shortage of qualified child care workers, and the issue has become a broader strain on the economy, About 16,000 Granite Staters were out of the workforce every month between September 2022 and October 2023 because they were providing care for children, according to a study from the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute.

The same study found a shortage of approximately 8,300 child care spots statewide in 2021.

As federal funds for health and social services are being cut, United Way Director Liz Fitzgerald hopes to keep the program running anyway. She thanked private supporters like the Community Development Finance Authority and the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation for their ongoing support. However, she said there is still mentoring and support available for graduates and encouraged them to keep on going.

“The national government is cutting resources that support child development through the Department of Health and Human Services,” she said. “Our local resources have been diminished, but we have a strong network of private funders. They believe very strongly in the work that you're doing and planning to do.”

This particular cohort has about a dozen people. It’s a mix of people early on in their career in child care, people switching careers and people who have been running a daycare for years.

This is the case for Carla Torres. She has been working with kids for over 16 years and joined to renew her CPR certification and grow professionally. During a short graduation speech, she encouraged her classmates to keep on going.

“It was hard for me sometimes,” she said in Spanish. “It’s easy to say ‘I don’t speak English at 100%, I can’t do it. There’s too many rules. There’s too much paperwork.’’ But there was always someone who told me that I could make it. When you have a passion for your work, you’re going to reflect it.”

Torres already owns a daycare, but she hopes to expand her skillset so she can eventually work with kids with autism.

Similarly, her classmates also have big dreams. With the certificate, participants have the ability to start working towards bigger goals, like opening a daycare business, working in a school or an established daycare, or taking early childhood classes in college.

Three hospitals run by Catholic healthcare organization Covenant Health are dealing with a cyberattack that forced the facilities to shut off all access to data systems.

Covenant Health operates the three hospitals and multiple skilled nursing and rehabilitation centers, assisted living residences, and community-based health and elder care organizations across Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont. The organization has nearly 6,000 employees.

A spokesperson for Covenant Health confirmed that a cyberattack impacted two hospitals in Maine — St. Joseph Hospital and St. Mary’s Health System — and one in New Hampshire, which is also called St. Joseph Hospital.

“On Monday, May 26, Covenant Health became aware of irregularities impacting connectivity across the organization. Out of an abundance of caution, we immediately discontinued access to all data systems in our hospitals, clinics and provider practices,” the spokesperson said.

Cybersecurity experts have been hired to determine what happened and to restore full system access.

“We are working to provide healthcare services as normal. Patients are encouraged to keep all appointments. If patients have questions, they should contact their provider’s office,” they added.

She explained the attack has had “minimal impact” on the organization’s post-acute care facilities because they are on a different clinical platform.

All of the hospitals posted messages on social media and on their websites notifying patients of technology outages earlier this week.

The messages said the hospitals are experiencing system issues affecting phones and internet access, making certain services unavailable.

St. Mary’s said care is continuing but noted wait times will be longer than normal and labs are only able to process paper orders or orders that can be shown through the platform MyChart. St. Joseph Hospital in New Hampshire said lab services were only available at the main hospital campus and services could only be provided with a physical order in hand.

No cybercriminal group has taken credit for the attack as of Friday. Last year, one of the largest Catholic health systems in the U.S. was attacked by the Black Basta ransomware gang.

There have already been multiple cyberattacks in 2025 impacting the care at U.S.y hospitals, including an incident last week affecting facilities in Ohio.

A hospital network in Maryland struggled for weeks with technological issues after a cyberattack in January and attacks on a New York blood center as well as dialysis giant DaVita caused dangerous impacts on patient care.