Keria Stockon is not just Grimsley’s school nurse, but a public health professional.

By Sally Nagappan

February 26, 2025

Have you ever had a question about one of your classes, needed help changing your schedule or needed to pick up a form? If you have, you have likely gone to the counseling office.

 

When you were in the counseling you may have noticed a room in the very back of the office. This is the office of Grimsley’s school nurse.

 

Nurse Keria Stockton is the school nurse at Grimley and has been working at the school for about three years. Before becoming a school nurse, Nurse Stockton worked as a nurse in a hospital, where she helped patients who were on life-sustaining care and medication. However, Nurse Stockton had an interest in working with a more consistent population. She felt being a school nurse would provide this.

 

She also wanted to be able to prevent health issues in the first place.  “I wanted to challenge myself to be a part of the care team that works more on the preventative front and that’s what school health offers,” Nurse Stockton said.

 

Unfortunately, when you walked into the counseling office, you may have noticed that Nurse Stockton’s office was dark and empty. 

 

This is because Nurse Stockton travels to several different schools, middle and elementary included, so sometimes she is not available when day-to-day health issues come up. Because of this she must train other school staff to assist with these issues.

 

“Between my assigned schools, I help take care of approximately 2,500 students…1 nurse,” Nurse Stockton said. 

 

In addition, Nurse Stockton explained that it is very challenging when there is a situation that she is not able to fix such as helping a student get the medication they need or eyeglasses. 

 

“Sometimes I wish I could hold the hands of the parents and students and walk them through the process so that the student’s needs can quickly be met,” Nurse Stockton said. 

 

However whenever she is able to help Nurse Stockton takes pride in being able to see the effect that her hard work has had in helping a student. As such since Nurse Stockton is involved in helping students in many ways so no two days look exactly alike.

 

“There’s no such thing [as a typical day] in this specialty of nursing. While I am the school nurse at Grimsley, my primary role is a public health nurse, and public health is very fluid,” Nurse Stockton said.

 

One common misconception about school nurses is that they are only there to help with minor injuries such as cuts or headaches. 

 

Being a school nurse actually, means a lot more than handing students ice or bandages for injuries. While school nurses are certainly able to help with those types of injuries, they mostly are there to provide education, community outreach and provide help to students' and their family so that individual health can be met.