MaryBeth Lovelace owns the only Sylvan Learning Center in Silverdale. It also happens to be the only one within Kitsap County.

Within the next six to 12 months, Lovelace said she hopes to be able to expand to Port Orchard. It’s a move she said, “seems natural.”

Having owned the Silverdale center for the last 5 years, she has only seen her job get bigger. Teachers at the Silverdale center now educate 160 students. They work and learn in a new larger building in Silverdale, where they moved last July.

“I look toward the future every day,” Lovelace said. “We’ve definitely grown.”

Lovelace is herself an English teacher, who has worked with Sylvan Learning Centers for nearly 10 years.

Earlier last month Sylvan Learning Systems, previously the parent company for Sylvan Learning Centers and other Sylvan companies, decided to concentrate exclusively on its higher learning divisions. As a result, the learning centers most of the public is familiar with, now fall under the purview of the newly created, Educate Operating Company, as will eSylvan online tutoring, Sylvan Education Solutions, Schulerhilfe and a Connections Academy, a developer of virtual charter schools.

“This transaction dramatically streamlines our company and strengthens an already impressive balance sheet,” said Douglas Becker, chair and CEO of Sylvan Learning Systems. “We will reduce our debentures convertible into shares, and will have approximately $230 million in cash. These capital resources will be available for the expansion of our campus-based and online businesses.”

Lovelace’s franchise works only with students, kindergarten through 12th grade. As a result, the news at the national level that separates the higher education part of Sylvan does not directly reflect the day-to-day operation of her business.

“There should be no change for us,” Lovelace said. “It’s more from a stockholder’s perspective since there was just so much going on.

“Actually we now expect there will be more of a focus for the learning centers from Educate (Operating Company),” she said.

(Temple A. Stark is a free-lance writer living in Kent. Reach him at writer@templestark.com).