NEWS
Wednesday, OctOber 2, 2019
HerMIstOnHeraLd.cOM • A7
Spoo recognized for supporting the library
By JESSICA POLLARD
STAFF WRITER
Hermiston School Dis-
trict’s secondary librarian,
Delia Fields, was hesitant
at first to nominate the dis-
trict’s high school princi-
pal, Tom Spoo, for an award
that would recognize him
for supporting the school’s
library program.
For almost a decade,
the only people receiving
the Distinguished Service
Award for school adminis-
trators had been on the other
side of the state. Pat Con-
soliver, then-principal of
The Dalles Middle School,
was honored in 2010.
“It’s just a different
makeup for many of those
schools,” she said. “We’re
not amazingly flashy. We
don’t have an urban center.
We’re understaffed.”
Some of the administra-
tors nominated in the past
oversaw schools in which
single libraries housed two
certified librarians. At the
Hermiston School District,
two librarians split their
time between eight differ-
ent school libraries, over-
seeing thousands of kids
each.
But once she started
writing Spoo’s nomination
letter, she knew she had a
winner. Spoo was selected
to receive the award earlier
this month.
“We’re still doing great
work. And Tom is part of
Hermiston Herald file photo
Hermiston High School principal Tom Spoo accepts an award as Hermiston School District’s Administrator of the Year in
February 2017.
what makes us successful,”
Fields said.
Spoo said he wasn’t
expecting to win the award,
and doesn’t like the spot-
light, but he is appreciative
to be recognized for support-
ing the library.
“I trust people to do their
jobs,” he said. “Sometimes
that means stepping back
and not micro-managing.”
Fields said she feels that
he’s someone who will
take her seriously when she
brings new ideas for the
library program to the table.
“He wears so many hats,
I’ve had to learn how to slip
in questions and pitches.
Sometimes I come out with
a losing hand, but most of
the time if I have a solid
plan with low cost, he’s very
positive,” she said.
Fields knew he really
cared when he started bring-
ing in books to process into
the high school library’s
system himself.
“He’s starting to recog-
nize that he and I have a
partnership that helps the
whole school,” she said.
Spoo will receive the
Distinguished
Service
Award next month during
the Oregon Association of
School Libraries conference
in Lincoln City.
This year, Hermiston
School District libraries
will participate in the Bat-
tle of the Books and create
a system that allows teach-
ers to easily search through
the library catalogue online.
Fields, who is a regional
representative for the Ore-
gon Association of School
Libraries, said she has rea-
son to believe that Spoo is
one of only a handful of
administrators in Eastern
Oregon who oversee library
programs that staff certified
librarians.
She said other schools
have libraries and assistants
to help run them, but no cer-
tified librarians to help stu-
dents navigate information
in the digital age.
“People see assistants
and think information lit-
eracy services are happen-
ing,” she said. “But they’re
not.”
Spoo said that he’s
noticed a difference in the
district’s library services
since some library positions
were cut over a decade ago.
“It was budget cuts, I
would have done the same
thing,” he said. “But you
look back now and think,
‘gosh, there is validity to
having librarians’.”
He added that in the dig-
ital age, students need extra
help determining the valid-
ity of different source mate-
rials online.
“That’s why librarians
are so critical now,” he said.
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