The St. Charles Parish Library Board of Control met on January 20, 2026, at 6:00 PM in the Council Chambers of the Courthouse. The meeting covered approval of previous minutes, a librarian's report with program updates and staffing changes, unfinished business including Hurricane Ida recovery and the Hahnville Branch Library project, and new business including election of officers and approval of the Louisiana Compliance Questionnaire. All votes were unanimous.
Oh the other I'd like to call the order of St. Charles Parish Library Board of Control meeting for January 20, 2026. If we can stay in with a moment of silence and a fledge after the United States of America and the visible student justice for all. I think Miss Leanne has already circulated the minutes. Everybody should have a copy. Is there two meetings? We need to um does it can I get a motion for the approval of the minutes for November 18th and December 17th of 2025? I'll approve the I'll approve it. The motion. Make a motion. Yes. I'll second. Who seconded it? Okay. Okay. Give me just a moment. Let me get uh set up for you. Okay. Okay. And that motion passes. He didn't together. We had a special meeting December 17th. Uh this time we'll have uh public comment. We don't have any scheduled. No scheduled public comment moving right along. Miss Leanne in the librarian's report. Hey, happy new year, everybody. I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday. Um so we kicked off the thousand books before kindergarten program at the beginning of January. And as of January twelfth, we have had 33 children already signed up for it. As I mentioned at our November meeting, A Thousand Books Before Kindergarten is a reading program that encourages parents and caregivers to read a thousand books with their children before they start kindergarten. And the goal is to help children develop early literacy skills like speaking, listening, and communicating, and to build their confidence as readers. It can also help parents and children bond through reading. When signing up, parents or caregivers will receive a packet that includes a fun booklet that can be used to track the number of books read and for every a hundred books read, the children can come to the library to receive a milestone sticker and a prize. When they reach a thousand books, they'll receive a completion prize. Parents and care caregivers can find more information on our website at my scpl.org slash a thousand books. So we're really excited to get this program started. The library was closed on December 5th for an all-staff training day. This was also the day the of the kickoff for the Americans and the Holocaust exhibit. So staff spent the morning learning more about the exhibit by experiencing the field trip experience that students who would be visiting would go through. We also handed out service awards and then staff spent the afternoon working on spec special projects at their branches. That evening we held the opening reception for the exhibit, which was attended by 60 patrons. We want to say special thanks to the friends of the library for providing refreshments and helping out with the reception. And it was very successful and brought lots of patrons to the library. We hosted field trips for 982 students and 106 chaperones and school administrators from six St. Charles Parish public schools, two private schools, home school groups, and a Girl Scout group. There were 23 library staff members who helped run field trip stations and the National World War II Museum Education Department hosted a station, bringing two or three members of their team to engage with the students. We also hosted nine different programs in conjunction conjunction with the exhibit with 241 in attendance at those. In addition to the programs and field trips, we complemented the exhibit with a local artifact display curated by the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience. We featured two book displays and a local history display curated by Rachel Alleman, who's one of our staff members, that featured local servicemen and women as well as local news headlines from that time.