Library Board - Regular Meeting

Roll call, please.

Bui.

Here.

Johnson.

Here.

Kim. Naker. Here. Prevradsky.

Here.

Yang. Chair Jost. Here. Five present, two absent being Kim and Yang. First item on the agenda is the approval of minutes 20 five-twenty, Approving 04/09/2025, Library Board minutes.

Alright, is there any discussion on the Library Board minutes? I will take a motion from Council President Nacre to approve the Library Board minutes. All in favor say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed?

Seven in favor? None opposed? The minutes are approved. Next item on our agenda is Staff Report 20 five-seventy four, Homework Centers and Reading Together.

Wonderful. Well, I'll turn it over to Director Hartman and Austine von Bergling, who is our volunteer coordinator, to talk about Homework Centers and Reading Together. Welcome.

Thank you very much for having me. Like I said, my name is Austine Baumburgling and I'm the volunteer coordinator for the St. Paul Public Library. And I appreciate the opportunity to share a little bit about our after school programs homework center and reading together. Our homework centers are comfortable spaces for students of all ages to drop in.

There are free spaces where students can get help with their homework from a tutor or they can work on their homework independently. So if you've never been to a homework center before, the spaces that our libraries have for homework centers are amazing. If you walked by or drove by a library with a homework center, you would see a big banner outside that said, Homework Help. And when you walked through the doors, you would see another big banner outside of the meeting room space that said, Homework Help. And then once you enter, you'd be greeted by a site coordinator welcoming you to the space and then showing you around.

And what you would see is computers and school supplies and tutors and kiddos utilizing the space. And then they would ask what subject need help you with. And they would pair you with a tutor that could help you with your homework. And so that is just a little description of our homework centers. I think one thing that makes our centers really unique is that they're for all ages.

And so, from elementary, middle school, high school, college, and beyond. And really special thing that we see is maybe elementary kids coming in to get help with their math homework and their parent who might be in a program where they're learning English as a second language coming in with their student and then both getting help and learning together, which is really cool. Just a few stats about the Homework Center in 2024 is we had eight forty one individual students come in, but we do see the same students pretty regularly. And some of our students, they love the homework center so much, we see them every single day, which is really great. In 2024, we saw a real big increase in the number of volunteers who helped as tutors.

And that is attributed to our amazing relationships with our local universities and colleges. A lot of professors will utilize our homework spaces as a way to give their students a chance to work in community. And so, we see a lot of college and university age students. But our tutors are really of all ages, our youngest being 16 and our oldest being 78. So there's also a chance for just an intergenerational experience there.

Resources. So we have a number of resources to offer at our homework centers, computers, school supplies. And I'll just give you a little kind of story about our school supplies and how they're they're utilized. So I don't know if you've ever been in the situation where a student in your life has waited to the last minute to get to complete a homework But we get that all the time. In this particular situation, a fourth grader at the Rondo Library came in with their parent and they needed to get a science assignment done, a presentation, actually.

So they needed a trifold poster board. And you know, those aren't always easy to come by. They're expensive. And if your whole class is working on it, they might not even be at the store that you go and try to find it, right? So, we had trifold poster boards with printer.

They were printing out these pictures of dinosaurs. We had the glue sticks and just all the supplies to make this presentation great. And then they were able to go to school the next day really confident about their assignment. We have, again, really amazing partners, Opportunity Saint Paul, University and Colleges like Saint Kate's, McAllister, Saint Thomas, Trained volunteers who not only get training at the beginning of their tutoring but also get opportunities to improve their skills all throughout their time tutoring. And then, library staff.

I'm one person and we're so fortunate to have site coordinators at each one of the homework centers who are there to be so that we can be as responsive as possible to the needs of our participants. And they work closely with the tutors and the families that attend. One particular resource that I just wanted to really highlight is our HelpNow Live Online Tutoring. It's a multiple. So this resource is free with your library card.

You get help from expert tutors and they're open from 1PM to 11PM. So it's a really unlimited resource. And it's available in English and Spanish. And so if our homework centers are closed because we got a snowstorm, the students aren't out in the cold, literally, but they're able to utilize this resource, You can send in an essay and you can get help and feedback. You can send in a problem if you're unsure about how to solve it.

They can help you with that. And even if you're at the homework center, you know, our tutors, it's impossible to know everything. And so the tutor and the student can go to the computer and get help on-site there. So it's a really valuable resource. These are all of our locations across the city.

And they are strategically placed based on the volume of students that we see and the need and community. Funding. So we are very grateful and fortunate to have the Friends of St. Paul Public Library who secure funding for our programming through these foundations and grants. And that allows us to purchase things like comfortable furniture, the school supplies that I talked about, training for our volunteers, and all the things that we need to run the program.

Now, the fun part, pictures. So, this picture shows irregulars at our Rondo Homework Center. And behind them is actually the board that when you come in and you write your subject down that you need help and the grade that you're in. And that's how we kind of know who's there, who's been helped, who needs to be helped. And like at our Rondo Library, we can get 60 students in a day and we want to make sure that every single student has at least a chance to spend a good half hour with a tutor to get at least one assignment done.

And so that is just a great picture of our students. So this is a great quote. We do evaluations of our programming in the winter, in the fall. We do participant surveys, mentor surveys just to get feedback so that we can make improvements where needed. This is an example of just an adult student getting help from one of our volunteers who's highly sought after.

So we have students who if they know that that tutor will be there that day, they will keep going back to them week after week. And so even though it's a drop in program, relationships are formed over time, which is really nice. And then this is just another quote from our surveys. And what I think is really cool is really neat is that we learn all the ways that our homework centers are being utilized that we maybe not even didn't or really didn't envision. And so preparing for a test for work, we've had participants who are writing books and want feedback on their books.

So it's really a great way to just kind of hear all the ways that folks are utilizing the homework centers. Okay. So that was homework centers. Now I'm going to switch gears and talk specifically about our Reading Together program. So Reading Together is a weekly program where participants are matched with a volunteer mentor.

They meet for forty five minutes each week, first through fifth graders. And, again, this program is free and we or they have an opportunity to practice reading, to discover books that they love, to play literacy games. It's one of those things where there's games and they're having fun but they don't know they're learning at the same time, so it makes it even more fun. And, all of that is to help boost literacy skills. And so, if you went into a library that was hosting reading together, you would see mentors and mentees maybe in a quieter part of the library and you would see them.

We have something called or something that they do that's structured is the I do, we do, you do structure, which you might see a mentor reading to their mentee and then them reading together and then building up that confidence to read on their own. And so, that is kind of what you would see happening in that space as well as playing Scrabble, Bananarama, Giant Uno, which is really very popular, and other games. So, some stats. We had 131 learners students last year and a really big increase in the hours, 127% increase in hours that we had mentee and mentor engagement. And that is really attributed to us opening up a new location for reading together at Highland Park.

And we did that based on a couple of things. One, the homework center site coordinator recognized that a lot of kids were zipping through their math homework and doing really well, but those same kids were really struggling with reading. And so, we looked at the data and we opened up that location and it's been really well received and attended. Resources. So, when I was reviewing my PowerPoint, I realized I put free books.

And, it's like free books, well, that's what libraries do. So, I really I would have reworded that. So, free books that we don't expect back. We give a lot of books out in this in the Reading Together program, hundreds of books and to stock the home libraries of our students. And, they get to for kids that are really motivated by goals, we have a progress tracker.

And so, they can set a goal and then get stickers towards the milestone. And then, once they've achieved it, they get a book. And so, a goal that I can think of was a student saying, oh, I'm going to read to my guinea pig fluffy every night this week. And so, meeting that goal and then getting their book. Again, partners, we work with America Reads at the University of Minnesota and Saint Kate's.

And that's a literacy program where students get paid to be tutors to help young readers achieve their goals around literacy. We have enthusiastic volunteers like Allie in this picture. This is Allie's second year doing reading together with her student. And that's a really beautiful thing about the program is that it's not limited to just one school year, that mentor relationship. We have a lot of mentors who've been working with the same student year after year.

And, we all know how important mentors are in the success in our lives. And then finally, library staff. Again, we have site coordinators who do an amazing job working with families and mentors on-site. Again, these are all of our locations spread across the city, so not too far from anyone. The funding is the same.

Share that. And then, again, this is what reading together looks like. So, in this picture, you see in the background just a journal that every kid is given where they can draw pictures or write about what they've read. There's a little reserve sign on the in the picture just because we want to make sure that space is available when they come in and read. And then it looks like they're reading Dog Man, is very popular.

Again, we do evaluations in the fall or excuse me, the winter and the spring. And this is a quote, and this reminds me of an experience that one of our newer Reading Together students had where after a couple of sessions with their mentor, they went home and told their mom that they want to write their own book. And their mom was very excited because that was not something that they had ever talked about or shared before. And, they wanted to write that book for their mentor. And, so, they wrote a little book and illustrated it.

And, it was a book about friendship and they presented it to their mentor, which was really very sweet. And reminds me that this program isn't an extension of school but an opportunity to be to form a relationship with another adult that cares about their success and that they have a chance to be really creative in this space. This is a family. Evelyn, the daughter, and her brother both saw the same mentor and their parents attributed reading together to improving Evelyn's reading scores in school. And then, this quote is just really what it's all about, being proud of improving their letters or their their reading or excuse me.

This is what it's all about, being proud of becoming a better reader. And that's that's ultimately what we want to see in the Reading Together program. So thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. And if you have any questions, I would love to answer them.

Council Member Pavrovsky.

Yeah. Thank you so much, Chair Jost. I was just telling Council President Nacre, I feel like I melted into my chair hearing that story about the kid wanting to write the book about their mentor. You very wisely told us the most impactful examples. I'm curious.

I'm always really curious about programs like this as someone who doesn't have children. And so I see the city and perceive the city so differently than folks who have to, not just folks with children, but people who have to find resources for them. Both my parents and all four of my grandparents were teachers, so none of this, it was all so internal, help and everything academic in school. And so I'm really curious how folks find you other than just if they already are in the library and then they learn about the program while they're there. So that's my first question is sort of especially folks who might need this most. I feel like they might also be the folks who are least likely to find out, but how do folks find you?

That's a great question. Thank you, council member. A couple of different ways. Word-of-mouth is really huge in our programs. And so, if one school kind of hears about it, when we start seeing a lot more attendance from that particular school, we also have great relationship with St.

Paul Public Schools. And so we do a lot of outreach in those schools and share our programming there. We have even heard from counselors at schools who know of students who could benefit from homework centers. And we've been able to share out specifically with students. And so that is one of our biggest draws.

I

don't know if there's any others.

Yeah. Yeah, I really appreciate it. I just want to note too, I think programs like this are such a great example. When people say, even when folks want to be a city council member or something, so many people bring up the school to them. So many people bring up to our office, they'll ask a question about St.

Paul Public Schools or whatever, and they might assume that there's more direct governance overlaps. But I think this is a great example where when someone says they care about the schools, they might be speaking more globally to the fact they want kids to have resources like this. And so I just love that this is one of the many, many, many, many things that the libraries provide. Even the example of that one slide of 131 learners but fourteen seventy three volunteer hours. I mean the idea that for a young child, that ten hours, if you average that out, that they're spending with that ten hours of that kind of real emotional and learning support is just so substantial.

Even though 131 is not tens of thousands, the impact on those learners is so big. So I just want to thank you for it and excited to be able to learn about it.

Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions from council members? Council President Aker.

Thanks so much, Chair Joseph, and thank you so much for the presentation. We're all melting over here. It was really, really sweet. And I'm just so proud to know that we make this service available. I was curious and maybe you said this. I'm sorry if I missed it. Is Homework Help available in all libraries across the city?

It's not available at all libraries. It's available at five of our, I would say, busiest libraries. And just there is a we're just kind of strategic in where they're placed in the city so that we can help kind of the the most trafficked locations and be available in a lot of places around the city.

Which libraries is it in?

Oh, I'd love our Rondo library, our Arlington Library, our Highland Park Library, our Sunray Library, and our Rice Street Library. Thanks. No problem. I know I think the

same thing. Any other questions? I have one question, and thank you for the presentation. I think I really value the stories that get shared at the library board meetings and those really help me to understand and experience what folks really get and so much that we value that our libraries provide. Do you know for homework help, I saw there was the live help is offered in English and Spanish, but the homework help like in person, is that offered in multiple languages?

That's a great question. While it's primarily in English, we do have other language speakers as tutors. And that when folks apply for being a volunteer tutor, I definitely look at what languages they speak and try to connect them to the libraries where that language skill would be most valuable.

Okay, great. Thank you. Any other questions? All right, well thank you so much. I really enjoyed hearing about that and appreciate your time.

Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Next on the agenda, staff report twenty five dash seventy five. Library update, mobile library.

So I'm really excited for us to get an update on our mobile library, Mobi. It was several months ago that we democratically picked that name, and so really excited about that. I'd like to welcome Savitri Santhran here to talk to us about that.

Hello, everyone. Good afternoon. Thank you, Library Board members for listening to me today. Again, my name is Savitri Santharan, pronounced sheher, and I am the mobile library manager. Let's see.

The mobile library, fondly known as Mobi, was officially launched on 08/03/2024. So we've been on the road for about eight months, but we waited for a very long time. And so, this picture captures some of the joy because we were all really excited that we finally had the truck on the road. We started our we had our lunch party at Ames Lake neighborhood, which is one of our regular community stops. And over a 100 people attended, and it was a really hot day.

If you can't see sweat in that picture, we were feeling really warm. And then the very next day, on Sunday, August 4, we started our regular schedule. We visit slightly over 20 stops on a regular basis, biweekly basis, and we travel to all seven wards of the city of Saint Paul. We are very intentional and strategic about where we go. Every one of our stops, the day stops which are schools, and the evening stops which are neighborhoods and senior residential facilities, Every one of those stops face some sort of barrier to visiting a brick and mortar location.

I should probably move to more pictures. So, we have a picture of our first patron a patron who took the first wheelchair ride on our exciting wheelchair lift, and then another picture of my team, there are just three of us, and that's before we filled the truck with library materials. Okay. A little few data points here. So this is for the last I guess, we've been on the roof for eight months, so this is more like seven months.

We've had 32,273 visitors, which is an average of 4,000 visitors per month. And that's a 132% increase over last year. Very proud of that number. And 31,073 items borrowed. So this would be books, DVDs, mobile hotspots, and that's a 56 increase over last year.

So, moving

from the data, I wanted to talk a little bit about our improvements and challenges. So, I would say the biggest improvement is the wheelchair lift. It's been wonderful for increasing access. We have heard from patrons who use walkers and wheelchairs that, yes, we can finally go into the truck instead of you guys just passing us stuff. And we also use that wheelchair lift to rotate materials so that we can kind of tailor according to where we go.

So for instance, at school visits, we only carry children's materials, children's books. And then when we go to a community stop, we have a little bit of everything. Another improvement, I would say, is we have tried to offer more services. So, we are beyond the bookmobile, beyond books. And, my team has done a fantastic job creating a whole rotation of activities such as pom pom catapults and paper tulips was something we did last week.

And so, we have a lot of kids who come in, they just come and say hi to us. They don't necessarily want to get a book or read. So, this gives them a way to engage and we can engage with them too that way. So, definitely an improvement. A challenge would be an adaptation to the new space because it is a smaller space from the old truck. Right? The last one was 39 feet long and the current one is 32 feet long. And establishing a workflow because we now have a two desks system. So, it's been yeah. Learning.

Lot lot of learning. And then increasing visitors at our slower stops. That's you know, every stop has ebbs and flows. This is more for the evening stops compared to the day stops. And we work hard to keep the number numbers high.

Every stop we're given is has two years to kind of at the same time and same day to kind of build that establish that routine so people can count on us. But, yeah. And then after two years, we reassess and decide if we're going to stay. A few quotes. We get lots of quotes.

We think that's I I speak for my team that we really we're very lucky in this job because we have a lot of grateful patrons who come and they tell us. So, the first one, thank you St. Paul for providing this mobile library service, it makes it a better place to live, is from an older adult at one of our senior living facilities. And then, the second quote is from a new American. She's a Kenyon mom who has become one of our top community partners because she's been enlisting all her neighbors to come and make library cards.

So, we love her. And, again, another quote from an older adult. And, we do hear regularly that we are like the top entertainment for the week or the two weeks, which is great. It's nice to hear affirming things like that. Some pictures for you guys.

So, is you can see the patrons in this picture. They're all Caneo, and this is at one of our stops on the East Side. We call it Burgundy Ridge, but we don't know if that's the official name, it's just what we call it. And then, a couple of staff to point out here on the I think it's your left or right. We have Tulare Epo, who is our new community specialist.

She started with the library in December 2024. So, it's been a few months, and she's been coming out regularly on our mobile library stop where we are at primarily a Kenyo focused community. So, she comes out and she can interact and speak with adults, something that I can't do. And then, on the on the other picture, we have our digital navigator. Our digital navigator was funded by Comcast for the year of 2024, and that's T.

Chang. He's since moved on to Riverview Library, but he's with a patron whom he helped get a new laptop. So, another wonderful extension of services, so to speak. And then, more pictures. So, we try, once it gets nice, to bring a lot of outdoor activities. The kids were really into giant Jenga and this what is this called? Cornhole. That's right. And then, launch picture at the bottom. Alright. So, thank you again for listening.

And,

we invite you all, you're all very welcome to stop by to visit us at a mobile library stop, maybe in your ward. And I'm curious to know if anybody has questions.

Great. Thank you so much. Any questions from council members? Council member Boratzky.

Thanks, Chair Jost. I love hearing about this. I feel like I have seen you in the neighborhood, but I might also be remembering the older one. It's tough for me to clearly I'm not sharp enough to actually categorize these memories. I'm curious you mentioned the schools during the day being sort of those visits. You also mentioned trying to provide this in a place where it might otherwise be under resourced or not have. So, at these schools, are these particularly places that either don't have their own library space and this is filling that gap? Or, are these sometimes just a very cool, fun, engaging, additive thing for folks that already have maybe a limited library space?

Yes. So, we have, again, like what Austine was saying, very good relationships with various Saint Paul public schools.

We

currently visit five St. Paul public schools and one public charter school. So, we use a variety of factors to help decide which schools to go to because we only have space for six. One is we need a really strong connection and partner there, somebody who's willing to help us with the legwork, which takes quite a bit of effort. So because we really are after numbers too.

On our end, we really want to see all of our time being used. And we've developed very efficient schedules so that as many kids as possible can see us in the times that we're there. We're at each school between four to five hours. And, some of the locations have a small library, other locations do not. It seems to go in and out depending on the budget year, but that's not for me to answer because that's on the school side.

And then we do offer basically, it's books. Books to the kids. That's what the schools have said over and over. The teachers are really appreciative of books and print, and that that we are a public library and we offer public library services. The experience that you're gonna get at the public library is different from what you would get at a school library.

So an example is a teacher said, we love Bookmobile oh, we love Mobile Library Day because we get to pick something fun to read. You guys have a great selection of fun things that the school library, they're more focused on reading levels and getting something for your paper or more serious things. Hope I answered the question. You.

And then a follow-up. I live near one of the public housing high rises. And if I've seen you, I might have seen it there. But do you all go to those? Like, live by the Hamlin High Rise?

Yes. Oh, yes. Oh, please help us support the Hamlin High Rise stop.

Okay. That's great. I feel like I'm truly like three houses away, so I feel like I would have had to have seen you. Yes. And the only other thing I wanted well, very supportive of that, and especially those high rises. I just There's multiple of them in Ward 4, and obviously there's multiple of them across the city. But it's unique where they are in many of our neighborhoods because they're actually some of the only density and sort of real true density of residents in one place, to be honest, in the entire neighborhood. In all of Midway, it's easily the most dense concentration of neighbors in one place. And so it's just the exact place I would want services like this to be where so many people can find you at once. So very thankful.

And just want to name both for this and the previous one. I didn't mention it before. I just am very thankful for the outside funding that you all have partnered to bring in to help amplify whatever resources we're able to give as a library board or a city, you're taking advantage of outside funding to multiply that benefit. And I just want to name all of the work and effort it takes to maintain and build those relationships to make that a reality because it's less pressure on our public resources. So just want to name that. That's very appreciated.

Council Member Yeh.

Thanks, Chair Giles. No questions here. I just wanted to share my enthusiasm and support for MOBY and also our Homework and reading together. Two things that are a highlight for me as I was listening to your presentation about MOBE especially is that I feel it is such a great way to introduce people to St. Paul Public Libraries, especially in areas where those children maybe have not been to a library before or have access to books easily. And then also it really fulfills this value that I always talk about which is meeting our communities where they're at, literally driving up Moby to our communities. So I want to say keep up all of the amazing work that you all are doing and thank you for your service here in our city.

Thank you, Councilman. Thank you. Councilmember Bowie.

Thank you, Council Chair. I also wanted to just echo everything that was mentioned. I did get a chance to walk in the parade and see the Moby in the parade. I was super excited. I almost hopped on to the to the to the truck, but you know that probably wouldn't been too much.

So cool. But I so everything that was said earlier, you know, having a presence in the community is so important and I just remember just having you know the sense of nostalgia like my experience growing up as a as a kid and going inside the library and having that that time to just you know be in a different environment where I don't have to be inside like the building, but it's like right down the street from my house. So I'm excited to see Moby in more parades. I know we have a list of festivals coming up and just really appreciate the effort and engagement and intentionality to get to as many kids as possible.

Thank you, Councilman Bui. Any other questions, comments? Well, I loved hearing this presentation about Moby and getting an update over the last several months. I look forward to visiting Moby in the different ward or maybe we want to get the chance to drive Moby. Know. I know there's talk about that last time. I really appreciate all of the work that everyone does and has put in the effort for our new Mobi. So thank you so much. And I guess if no one else has any questions, then thank you so much. And I guess with nothing else to come before us, we are adjourned.