PENDLETON – When Anne Livingston learned how much a private school helped her son, she decided to build her own.

Construction is under way at 3201 S.W. Perkins Ave. on a 3,000-square-foot Sylvan Learning Center, which Livingston hopes to open in April. She is advertising for a director of education and at least seven part-time teachers to staff the school.

The construction is valued at $190,000.

Livingston, the center’s director, hopes to provide other parents with the same satisfaction she received from the Sylvan Learning Center in Kennewick, where she took her second-grader, Jarrod, two years ago.

“He wasn’t getting the reading,” she said. “Something had to be done.”

Frustrated with her son’s lack of progress in public school, Livingston enrolled him in the Sylvan program in Tri-Cities and drove him there for 1 1/2-hour sessions twice a week throughout the summer of 2003.

“It helped him a lot,” she said.

Her son struggled in public school, she said.

“He didn’t move at as fast a pace as the other kids and he got left behind,” Livingston said. “He got scared.”

She stressed that Sylvan’s instructional programs aren’t intended to compete with those in public schools.

“It’s not a school substitute,” she said. “This is a complementary-type service.”

Upon enrollment in a Sylvan Learning Center, Livingston said students take a battery of diagnostic tests to determine their educational needs and preferred learning methods. Instruction then proceeds at the students’ pace with up to three students per teacher, she added. Teachers allow students to proceed when they demonstrate proficiency at the skill being taught.

“I think the biggest thing that Sylvan gave him was his self-confidence back,” Livingston said of her son. “Step by step at his own pace, he caught up. At least, he was willing to try when he got done. He loves Sylvan.”

Livingston said Sylvan offers classes for all ages in reading, mathematics and study skills and to help high school students prepare for college-entrance examinations.

“Sylvan is different things to different people,” she said of the franchise operation. “Maybe you’re the best in the class and you’re bored to tears. It’s not just for remedial kids. It’s for kids who like learning, who want to learn.”