Sylvan Learning Center In Brookfield Wins Grant, Keeps Innovating
BROOKFIELD, CT — Arlene Garcia, owner and general manager of Brookfield's Sylvan Learning Center, has been finding silver linings and pulling rabbits from hats ever since the coronavirus outbreak broke out in March.
Garcia said she transformed her business, which offers supplemental education services at its 243 Federal Road center, "literally overnight" to provide online tutoring. But the virus and plummeting revenue took its toll on the business's staffing, until only Garcia and two of her tutors were left to brave their new online world.
"We had no choice but to adapt, we lost 70-80 percent of revenue in those first few months," she said. When the state gave businesses like hers the green light to reopen in June, the sigh of relief was quickly followed by a fresh anxiety: Reopening came with a steep cost in compliance. The Center had to reconfigure its space for social distancing mandates, and then there were all those bills for the new personal protective equipment.
Garcia set about the arduous process of applying for assistance with the pro bono help of a grant writer who said he wanted to do his part for the Black Lives Matter movement. "This was his way of giving back," she said.
The digging hit pay dirt in August, when her business was awarded a $5,000 COVID-19 relief and recovery grant from The Red Backpack Fund, an opportunity for small businesses and nonprofits made possible by The Spanx by Sara Blakely Foundation.
"We have applied for so many, but this is the only one we have gotten so far," Garcia said. She is using the new grant money to order more PPE, which includes plexiglass barriers.
But her proudest achievement this past summer was a collaboration with another charitable stranger.
"This was an Asian woman who wanted to give back to the Black Lives Matter movement. She wanted to help disadvantaged students of color." Garcia said. She reached out to a couple of local churches who directed her to three African-American girls who would benefit from some free SAT tutoring over the summer.
That episode and her business's focus on its new online strategy has only served to underscore the once-hidden reality that many of her most needy clients lacked the basic tools required for success.
"With COVID, we see the technological gap is even more apparent. There's always been this achievement gap, but now you have this technological gap. We're going to try and bridge this gap," Garcia said.
Sylvan is now offering "school support" for families flummoxed by hybrid or fully remote schedules that throw a monkey wrench into working parents' own routines. The learning center has recently added early drop-off hours, and now find themselves competing with traditional preschool and daycare centers.
Garcia believes her business's early adoption of teleconferencing technologies will have a long-term benefit, as online learning has become accepted if not embraced by students and parents, and won't be going away soon, if ever.
"If a child has a headache or for whatever reason doesn't feel up to coming into the center one day, we're able to still supply that one-to-one support," Garcia said. "The silver lining is that we are still able to provide the same one-to-one learning online that we do in person."
This article originally appeared on the Brookfield Patch
