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Not only was Marilyn Koop surprised that she won, she didn't even know she was entered.
By KENT FISCHER
© St. Petersburg Times, published July 27, 2001
LAND O'LAKES -- When Marilyn Koop got the call, she had no idea why the person on the other end of the line was congratulating her. Koop didn't even know that she was in the running to be the nation's School Nurse of the Year.
She was, and she is.
The award, bestowed by the American School Health Association, comes on the heels of another big award Koop won last year: Florida School Health Supervisor of the Year.
Koop says being the nation's School Nurse of the Year is nice, but to her the bigger honor is the fact that the district's nurses nominated her.
"There are thousands of people out there doing what I'm doing," said Koop, who supervises the Pasco County School District's 37 school nurses. "The only reason this all happened is because my staff nominated me and wrote nice letters."
Well, that and the fact that she spent about 20 years caring for kids and advocating for comprehensive health education in Florida schools.
Koop, 55, started her career as an operating room nurse in local hospitals. A disagreeable job transfer in 1979 sent her looking for a new job, just as the school district was beginning its new school nurse program. Koop, who is not related to former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, was one of the original seven nurses hired that year.
Over the years, she has worked at just about every school in west Pasco and spent six years as the nurse at River Ridge Middle/High School. Three years ago she moved into her current job at the district's central office.
Over her career, Koop has helped rewrite the district's sex education curriculum, updated district policies on dispensing medicine and got computer technology into the hands of school nurses. She also recently obtained national school nurse certification.
Last year, Pasco's nurses treated and counseled 63,000 students for ailments ranging from scrapes and bruises to medical conditions such as diabetes.
"There are many, many more medically complex children in our school today than when I started back in 1979," Koop said. "There are so many kids with special problems -- feeding tubes, heart conditions."
But among the most valuable jobs that a school nurse performs is simply providing a receptive ear for kids in trouble, she said.
"A high school nurse spends a lot of time as a counselor and health adviser," Koop said.
Koop will receive her national School Nurse of the Year award in November at a conference of nurses in Albuquerque, N.M.