(Note: The raw transcript states the meeting date as September 15, 2026, but the provided metadata indicates the meeting took place on September 16, 2026. This summary uses the latter date.)
The St. Charles Parish Library Board of Control met on September 16, 2026. The meeting began with a moment of silence, prayer, and the Pledge of Allegiance. The board approved minutes from the May 19, 2026 meeting, received the Librarian's Report on summer reading program statistics, facility updates, and staffing changes, discussed the Honville Branch Library project, and entered an executive session for the annual evaluation of the director. The meeting concluded with adjournment.
The attendance report was acknowledged with all members present.
Oh, we're good. We're good. Okay. Hi, good afternoon. This is the St. Charles Parish Library Board of Control meeting for September 15th, 2026. If we can stand and have a moment of silence and prayer, and then Mr. Methurn can meet us in the pledge. All right. And to the Republic for which it stands. One nation under God. Indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. All right, the first order of business is the approval of the minutes from our May 19th, 2026 meeting. And I believe they have been circulated by You circulated them right. By Ms. Benedict. Can we have a motion to approve the minutes? I'll make a motion. We approve the minutes from last month. All right, can I get a second? Thank you. All right, the motion passes unanimously, so the minutes have been approved. Um for the attendance report. I believe everybody signed the attendance report. All right. Next item is public comment. Do we have any public comment scheduled? No, no scheduled. All right. And next up is the most informative part, the library readers report, Miss Benedict. Okay. All right. So we closed out another successful summer reading program at the end of July. Um I've given each of you a handout. It looks like this. Um showing reading challenge completion and program attendance. If you look at the first side that says reading challenge statistics, you'll see that we had 2,484 patrons sign up for the reading challenge. That's a slight increase from last year. Um completions, however, were down by almost 15%, with 1,269 patrons completing the challenge of reading for at least 360 minutes. Part of the reason for this, though, was that several daycares that previously participated through our bookmobile service either closed or chose not to participate this year. Um so we actually saw a decrease of 310 participants. Um that was a difference just from Bookmobile last year. Um despite the decrease in children's completions, we did see we actually saw an increase in teen completion by 13% and an increase by about 1% of adult completions. So that was kind of surprising. Um but again, that was because of we think that's a lot, had a lot to do with the daycares that did not participate as they had previously. This year our community reading goal was 2,750,000 minutes. While we didn't complete um meet this goal, our community still read 2,164,118 minutes. Um so great job, St. St.