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Bill Boersma and Shelly Howell

Downtown Decatur is welcoming a new business this month: Huntington Learning Center. Opening its doors the first week of May, Huntington is a full-service tutoring and testing center. It’s also a family business owned and run by husband and wife Bill Boersma and Shelly Howell.

“We’re so happy to have found this space in Decatur,” Boersma said recently, “as this is a community where parents are very dedicated to education. We want to be a resource to families whose children need extra support in school, want to improve their scores on tests like the SAT, or just need help getting through a tough math class. We hope to help a lot of kids.”

Huntington is a franchise with over 300 centers nationwide, and several in the Atlanta area. It was founded in 1977 by Ray and Ilene Huntington, who started a tutoring center in New Jersey and still run the corporation over 40 years later.

“Both of us wanted to be teachers at different points in our lives,” Howell told Decaturish, “but we got pulled into other areas. Bill is a CPA with a finance and accounting background, while I started as an advertising copywriter and went on to write screenplays and run a non-profit in Los Angeles. So this business finally lets us work with children and become educators. We’re delighted to be here.”

“Honestly, we didn’t think cities like Decatur existed anymore,” Boersma added. “This is such an amazing, diverse, exciting community where people are involved and participate in their city.  Our daughter teaches in the Decatur schools and really encouraged us to start our business here. The local schools are among the best in the nation and have been very open to us.”

“I’m really excited about our SAT prep programs,” Howell added. “Parents with high school students know that a good SAT score can open doors at more colleges, and translates into scholarship money for families. The students who takes our SAT program see an average score increase of 225 points, they get over $57,000 in scholarship offers. It’s just a good investment.”

For more information on Huntington Learning Center, give them a call at 866-400-1359 or go on the website at www.huntingtonhelps.com.  They are at 335 West Ponce de Leon in downtown Decatur.