K-12 instructional settings diversified worldwide due to the COVID-19 pandemic response. Research is needed in examining school librarians' evolving roles during this era. Beginning in the 2021-2022 school year, K-12 remote-synchronous learning was an instructional option in a progressive U.S. public school district. This new "school" within the district was established without funding allocated for a certified school librarian. The overarching research question of this study was "What did it mean to be a school librarian during the COVID-19 pandemic?" The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore, analyze and describe the school librarians' experience of changes in their professional roles during the pandemic. Semistructured interviews of six school librarians were used to generate rich, detailed descriptions of the phenomenon. Three major themes emerged: the local context of the school librarians' roles during the pandemic, the pandemic as an antagonist to the school librarians' former and present roles, and the experience of tensions within the evolution of the school librarians' roles. The results suggested that the pandemic's contributions to students' learning loss present an ongoing, critical need for school librarians' core value of positively impacting student achievement. Implications for school librarians are that they are strongly positioned to thrive during further evolutions of their roles as instructional settings continue to diversify.