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Alfond gives $2.3 million gift to Kents Hill School

By Susan McMillan smcmillan@mainetoday.com
Staff Writer

READFIELD -- A $2.3 million gift from the Harold Alfond Foundation will allow Kents Hill School to build a new learning center for students with learning disabilities.

The Waters Learning Skills Center is outgrowing its current home, Chase Hall -- an old house across Route 17 from the rest of campus.

The new Akin Learning Center will be built on the west end of the Hansen Quadrangle, near other academic buildings. The school will add onto an existing building that used to be the girls' fieldhouse.

The project is expected to be completed in March.

Out of Kents Hill's enrollment of 240, some 40 to 50 students benefit from one-on-one or two-on-one tutoring at the center each year, spokesman Jason Hersom said.

The students have "mild to moderate learning differences," such as attention deficit disorder or difficulties processing information.

"They're going to take all of the regular college preparatory classes," Hersom said of the students with disabilities. "In this tutorial program, it allows the students the extra support they need in order to be successful."

The project will include lots of up-to-date technology, including wireless Internet, interactive white boards, speech-transcription programs and iPads for instructors, said Janet Dunn, director of the learning center.

The building will be set up to be flexible for individual or group study and will have a kitchen and a living room with a gas fireplace.

"I think the most important thing that (the students) and we were trying to achieve was that it not be a classroom building, that it be more of a comfortable place for them to come and study," Dunn said.

The Akin Learning Center is named for Board of Trustees President Steven P. Akin; his wife, Jane; and their daughter, Susan, who graduated in 2003.

"Susan was a learning-center student and benefited greatly from the program," Hersom said. "(Steven Akin)'s taken the lead in making sure this new facility is built and completed."

Harold Alfond's children, Ted and Susan, both graduated from Kents Hill in 1964; Ted Alfond is vice president of the Board of Trustees.

The Alfond family has been the school's most generous benefactors, Development Director Matt Crane said.

Other major gifts to Kents Hill include support for the Harold and Ted Alfond Athletics Center, built in 2001; and $2.7 million given in 2007 for the Harold Alfond Athletics Fields, the largest artificial turf complex in New England.

Dunn looks forward to being in a modern building in the center of campus.

"Just to have a facility that has the things in it that we wanted to have, it's really, really exciting to see it all come together," she said.

Susan McMillan -- 621-5645

smcmillan@mainetoday.com